


The Excalibur Project

by Tuddelig



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Movie, Spies!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-19 10:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3606591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tuddelig/pseuds/Tuddelig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eggsy is almost one hundred percent certain Eliza Doolittle never had to put up with this nonsense. </p>
<p>Or</p>
<p>Roxy discovers a mole in the Kingsman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overture

The only logical conclusion, Roxy decides, twitchy with adrenaline as she adjusts the straps on her parachute for the tenth time in half as many minutes, is that the new Arthur must be some kind of sadist. 

It would not surprise her, given the whispered gossip overheard about the woman’s proclivities at the sprawling evening parties her parents insisted she attend from ages nine to seventeen. But she’s overheard a lot of things about a lot people of high social standing, and her uncle--Percival to her now--had warned her early on to not take any of it at face value. Even at thirteen, she had suspected that the rumors had more to do with the deep seated discomfort that some of her parents more old-fashioned and inflexible peers had felt seeing a powerful woman’s star on the rise. 

(She wonders what the old guard would think if they knew that the Kingsman were being led by a female Arthur, on loan from MI6 until a more permanent solution could be arranged. It’s only the second time in the organizations’ history.) 

Taking new evidence into consideration, however, has led Roxy to reassess her dismissal of the gossip and consider that perhaps there might have been some truth behind it. Since strapping herself into that painfully yellow cold war anachronism and drifting into the upper atmosphere to save the world from one Richmond Valentine, she’s had two dozen operations assigned to her. Half of those had required parachutes. 

Today's’ jump is straightforward at least, involving nothing as difficult as shooting as satellite out of orbit. But that doesn't stop her heart from thudding in her chest like a trip hammer.

She grits her teeth, tightening her hold on the canvas loop and looking out and down at the earth flitting by below the belly of the little plane. The stealth aircraft is moving fast, rapidly eating up long stretches of the dark Siberian plains. The drop site, an isolated compound belonging to a man named Michael Roman, cannot be far now. 

“Alright Lancelot?” Merlin’s small, tinny voice crackles from the comm in her helmet. “Your blood pressure and heart rate are rather elevated.”

Roxy wants to point out that perhaps this due to the fact that Merlin and Arthur keep insisting on dropping her from great heights. But she knows that Merlin, at least, is sympathetic. 

She had asked, flustered and edgy on her second mission after V-day, how anyone could ever actually enjoy hurtling toward the earth at great speed--how Eggsy could love it, even after the entire parachute debacle during training. 

“Our Galahad,” Merlin had pointed out dryly, “Once believed that Harry Hart could explode people’s heads with his mind.”

Roxy had let out a surprised bark of laughter, slightly hysterical and wholly delighted, because of course he had. She had remembered with a pang the starry-eyed way Eggsy used to follow Hart around like a foul-mouthed, ill-mannered puppy, as Merlin continued: “The lad’s bright enough, but he doesn’t always think things through.”

“You think I’m thinking about it too much?” Roxy had asked, skeptical. 

“You are an excellent agent,” Merlin had said, “But this is an area where you can improve. We’ll keep doing this until it’s second nature--boring as running to the corner store for milk and eggs.”

That had been months ago.

“I’m good,” Roxy tells him now, voice steady as she glances to the unlit green go-ahead light out of the corner of her eye. “We’ll be up on the drop site soon.”

“Then let’s go over this one more time,” Merlin suggests, though he knows perfectly well that Roxy already has the directives of simple recon mission memorized.

“Doctor Mikhail Roman,” Roxy lists off dutifully. “57 years old. Of Russian extraction, but an American citizen. Comes from money. Used to work as a biomedical researcher in New York city until a few years ago. Sloan Kettering tried to keep the reason for his dismissal out of the media, and for the most part succeeded. The only thing we know is that Roman committed some gross ethical violations leading to his more or less fleeing the states. ”

The indicators on the screen of her helmet come to life, glowing ghostly and eerily green against the night. The sparse lights below, they inform her, are the outskirts of the vast Roman property.

“Our intel indicates that Roman was in contact with Valentine and made financial contributions to the group,” Roxy continues, “but either he had no implant or somehow avoided having it triggered during V-day. He rode out the events of V-day up here with at least fifty other people, a mix of civilian scientists and ex KGB-types.” 

The green light flashes on, and her stomach lurches like it has decided to take the 9000 foot plunge prematurely.

“Sorry to cut this short Merlin,” Roxy says, “I just got the green light.”

“Copy that. Remember Lancelot, this mission is strictly recon. Do not engage with Roman or any in his contingent.”

“Roger. Lancelot out.” 

Perhaps there is a method to the madness of continually flinging oneself out of planes, because Roxy finds it incrementally less difficult with each mission. 

Unfortunately, the sudden drop into freefall is just as viscerally terrifying as ever when Roxy steps out of the body of the plane and into the air. 

She gathers speed quickly as the wind whips around the sleek lines of her jumpsuit, curls around every part of her body and pushes like a giant, invisible hand.

What if the parachute doesn't deploy this time? The thought rises, panicky and unbidden in her mind as the ground rises up to meet her with worrying speed. What if there’s something wrong with it? What if there’s no parachute in the pack at all? 

Well, she consoles herself, there’s nothing to be done about that now, after all. 

Roxy drops quickly into position, wasting no time on acrobatics, and angles herself according to the indicators on her viewscreen as the relentless pull of gravity evens out and she reaches her terminal velocity.

At 700 feet she deploys the chute, which jolts her roughly out of her fall, and steers herself to land gently in the small deserted meadow at the northeast corner of the Roman compound. The site is well within the labyrinth of sharply barbed security fences, and she has to get out of the open as soon as possible lest the security patrol set to come by in--she glances at the time display in her helmet--three minutes discover her presence.

With a push of a small button on the wrist of her jumpsuit the thin silvery-grey parachute winds itself back into her pack, folding efficiently into itself like an origami crane. 

She takes several deep breaths and it is so, so marvelously brilliant to feel the solidness of the earth beneath her feet, even if her knees feel a bit like jelly. 

“I’m in,” Roxy tells Merlin as she makes her way toward the first building she is tasked in investigating. “Heading toward the first point now.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all that Michael Roman is the mysterious associate of a deceased tech mogul billionaire psychotically bent on the downfall of human civilization, the man’s siberian compound is, on the whole, terribly uninteresting. 

Ducking security patrols and skirting surveillance cameras, she has investigated a surprisingly well-equipped first aid station and sleeping quarters. She was then surprised to find that a number of the small outbuildings housed a population of livestock animals--which had been equally surprised by her sudden descent through the window. Retreated quickly, relieved when the startled squawks of the chickens had drawn no attention, she had made her way to the next building. 

Roxy was a little disappointed when the squat concrete warehouse revealed itself to be nothing more than an enormous pantry.

“Roman appears to be something of a doomsday prepper,” Merlin comments as Roxy wanders past row upon row of canned goods.

“Given the company he kept,” Roxy says, walking between shelves twice her height, “I can’t say I’m all that surprised.”

She picks up an oversized red and white can carefully and examines it, “Other than ten lifetimes worth of Campbells, there isn't much.”

“This is ridiculous,” She sighs, replacing the can and making her way back from where she came. “There has to be something else here.”

“Right. I can’t imagine he needs heavily armed patrols every half hour because the locals have been coveting his beef and barley soup.” 

Roxy picks her way slowly and cautiously back out into the cold and moves toward her final target--a small cluster of underground rooms accessible through either a set of cellar doors or (in Roxy’s case) an old and little-used coal chute. The report indicated that the Roman compound possessed a substantial appetite for electrical power, yet all that she had seen tonight would not account for even half of that. 

Whatever Roman is trying to hide, Roxy thinks as she scopes out the coal chute, must be right under her feet. 

Her helmet indicates no heat signatures in the rooms. Perfect. She will need to move quickly, however, as the patrols seem to perform their check of this area like clockwork. She has twenty minutes, but will be out in ten. 

With a little bit of work and a slight detour, the coal chute lands her above the large and deserted main room of the underground complex. Expecting a cellar, she is momentarily disoriented to find herself looking down into a clean and gleaming laboratory dimly lit by yellow recessed lighting in the floor. 

Roxy carefully pinches one of Merlin’s latest gadgets into the tangle of wires dangling below the infrared video camera that is the rooms lone sentry before dropping silently to the floor. The camera will now send back a loop of the previous ten minutes and, if all goes well, her manipulation will not be discovered until well after she is halfway around the world. 

The walls of the room are crowded with chemical hoods and expensive looking equipment. Roxy thinks she recognizes an MRI in the southwest corner, sitting next to a baffling large cylindrical structure as tall as she and with at least a dozen glass protuberances sprouting off of it on silver metal tubing. Other than the MRI, the other equipment is as puzzling to her as the bulbous cylinder. 

A few curiousities, such as a sturdy piece of furniture that looks rather like the devils own dentist’s chair, send shivers running down her shoulders as she moves past, eyeing the thick and ugly looking leather restraints.

Roxy makes her way toward the desktop computer she spots on one of the lab benches, bending down to connect the small remote access device so that Merlin can have free reign over the lab network. 

“Have at it, Merlin,” She whispers.

“Happily. See if you can find any lab books in the meantime, or any other hard copy that can tell us what our ethically-challenged mad scientist might be up to these days.”

“Roger.”

Roxy turns slowly on the spot, looking around until she spots a thick stack of notebooks next to what must be the scientist’s workstation. It is littered with what look like cheaply made, science-themed toys which, upon closer inspection, bear the brands of numerous scientific conferences. 

Souvenirs, Roxy decides, looking at a fluffy stuffed bear wearing a tiny t shirt that proclaims ‘biologists do it in their genes’. Beside it sits an disturbingly anthropomorphised double helix of DNA, ten inches tall and holding out a block of post-it notes in its gloved hands with aggressive glee. 

The childish knickknacks are interspersed with wicked looking surgical tools, some still bearing a crust of something that looks suspiciously like blood. 

She pushes aside five mostly-empty Styrofoam coffee cups and extracts the first notebook under the watchful and googly-eyed stare of a giant novelty eppendorf tube. Flipping through the pages of the notebook, covered in a tiny, messy hand, trusting her helmets camera to capture the details, does not take long. She could examine them herself, but time is pressing, and she wants to collect as much intel as she can before she makes her escape. 

A slightly worse-for-wear filing cabinet looks promising and so, with a little coaxing, she pries open the top drawer. It is disappointingly empty save for a few lonely packing peanuts.   
The bottom drawer is more fruitful, and she scoops out the six or so manila folders to lay out across the scarred black lab bench for examination. She is about to subject them to the same brusque, efficient flip-through as the lab notebooks had received when a familiar-looking name catches her eye on one of the file labels. 

PERCIVAL.

Roxy stops short. What is her Uncle’s codename doing here? Could it just be a coincidence?

But no, she looks to the next file, which is labeled GALAHAD. Underneath someone has penciled HARRY HEART and EXCALIBUR PROJECT. 

“Lancelot, what have you found?” Merlin, done with the computer, must have turned his attention back to her, because his voice is a sudden surprise in her ear. 

“I can't say...” Roxy, after a seconds deliberation, flips open the file labeled Percival.

Merlin draws in a sharp intake of breath, seeing the contents through her video feed and defining their meaning as soon as she does. 

“Oh for fucks sake,” He sighs, “Not again.”


	2. On the street where you live

Eggsy jerks awake at--he fumbles blindly to turn the glowing face of the alarm clock to see--god, 2:47 am with no idea why. He scrubs his sweaty face with his palms and disentangles his feet from the covers, which he seems to have kicked almost entirely to the floor again. 

The insomnia is nothing new. It was an almost nightly occurrence for the first month after he moved into Harry’s old place, but occurs less frequently now. He likes to think that this is because his body has finally adjusted to a mattress that isn’t total shite, but Eggsy has strategically decided to avoid introspection on the subject. 

He considers trying to go back to sleep, but instead pulls one of his ratty old army t shirts on over his head and pads silently into the hallway to make the rounds. Checking in on his mum and baby sister will go a long way toward cooling his sudden unease. 

Logically, he knows the house now belongs to the Unwin family, but for the first few weeks he couldn’t help but wait for the other oxford to drop. Part of him is still waiting. He feels like he’s trespassing, and can’t seem to stop anticipating the inevitable moment when someone notices. When someone finally pulls the finely made, irrationally expensive rug out from under his feet. 

But, he thinks as he pushes open the door to his sisters room, it is so, so good to be able to give his baby sister her own room. 

It’s one of the only changes that Eggsy has made to the house, converting a guest room on the second floor into a nursery for the toddler. One of his largest expenses too. Though he has more money than he knows what to do with now, he still finds himself living as though they’re on the dole. 

The room is painted sunshine yellow, with bit n’ bobs of toys and a few stray socks strewn about the plush, softly carpeted floor. The toddler is fast asleep, swaddled deeply in a bright yellow comforter, so that just the muss of her dark hair peeks out. On the nightstand next to the bed is Harry’s copy of Pride and Prejudice 

Eggsy had found the well-worn and dog-eared paperback the night after his mentor left for Kentucky, with a bookmark a little over halfway through. He hasn’t moved the bookmark, but he’s taken to reading it to his sister to help her fall asleep at night. Not your typical bedtime fare for a two year old, Eggsy is sure, but they don’t have any children’s books and Eggsy’s never read it either. So.

A cursory check reveals his mother sleeping just as peacefully in the second guest bedroom, so Eggsy slips downstairs to the warmly wood-paneled study. The cozy room is vacant and a glance at his laptop assures him that the alarm is still armed and silent. Nothing looks amiss in the kitchen or dining room either. 

He even checks Harry’s creepy, serial-killer-chic bathroom. Which is also empty aside from the dead dog and the approximately four million dead butterflies Harry saw fit to plaster over the walls. 

Eggsy finds himself reluctant remove the taxidermied Mr. Pickles or the bugs from the little water closet, even if the seriously worrying outliers in Harry’s otherwise impeccable taste make it really hard to take a piss in there. 

He gives Mr. Pickles a second glance and wonders, not for the first time, if Harry had been lonely.

Eggsy is walking back to the dining room through the kitchen when one of the shadows moves behind him. He spots the movement from the corner of his eye and his heart lurches. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, the remaining dregs of sleepiness are washed away. He turns quickly on his heel, but sees only the empty hallway.

Exiting the kitchen, he presses a thumb against one of the ornate brass drawer pulls. This is one of Harry’s decorating choices that he can actually get behind, because it is the fingerprint recognition system for the badass hidden safe where he hides his gun (and the three grenade-lighters and one poison-pen he sort-of-maybe-borrowed from the arms room at the tailor shop). This he grabs and silently readies as he stalks carefully down the dark corridor, listening carefully. The only sound he can hear is the steady thump of his own heartbeat. 

It is a dead end, and the only place the intruder could have gone--if there is an intruder, if his knackered brain isn't playing tricks on him--is into the study. A dim light pools out of the half-open doorway, yet he distinctly remembers turning the lamp off after he left earlier. 

“Hello?” He calls out, since on the off chance that his mum has acquired the ability to sneak around in the dark like a god damn ninja, he really doesn’t want to shoot her.

“It’s me, Eggsy.” 

“Jesus Roxy,” Eggsy hisses, pearing into the room to see Roxy seated at the overstuffed leather chair with JB--the traitor--planted contentedly in her lap.

“What the hell are you doing in my house right now? Are you daft?” Eggsy whispers, straining to keep his voice level and dropping his gun to his side. He is extraordinarily pissed off, but sound carries very well from the study to the upstairs bedrooms. “Sneaking around like that, I could have shot you.”

Roxy opens her mouth to reply but Eggsy turns his attention to his dog: “And you. Why do I even keep you around? I knew I should have picked the German Shepherd.”

The pug toddles himself to the floor and waddles over to sit, flank flush with Eggsy’s knee, and look up at him, little stump tail wagging with such force that his entire back half wiggles from side to side.

“Argh,” Eggsy growls at the dog, inarticulate and exasperated, before turning to Roxy.

Of the two of them, at least Roxy has the decency to look guilty. Actually, Eggsy realizes, she looks exhausted. She has dark circles under her eyes. Her clothes look...different. As though she’d foregone her usual sharp jackets and trousers for a roll through the nearest Oxfam, electing to stick with whatever stuck. Her hair is messier than Eggsy’s ever seen it.

“I know, I know,” She says. “I’m sorry. I really am, but I need your help.”

She must see the look on his face because she quickly adds: “Don’t worry. There’s no immediate danger, but It’s a long story. Something’s happened and I really do need your help. I would have called, but I had to ditch my phone--”

“Hold on,” Eggsy sighs, offering a hand to help Roxy pull herself out of the chair. “Let’s go to the kitchen. There’s better sound insulation so we won’t wake mum or the wee little one. I’ll put the kettle on.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roxy fills him in on the mission to Roman’s compound, about the underground lab. Exhausted and ruffled as she is, Roxy still thanks him politely for the tea. She sits at his kitchen table with perfect posture, her legs crossed delicately at the ankle. Her near-unflappable poise and composure, how fucking kind she can be, remind him achingly of Harry sometimes. 

“The folder marked Percival,” She explains, voice steady but clutching at her tea so tightly that Eggsy worries she might crack Harry’s mug, “Was an extensive personnel file. Plus hard copies of communications between Percival, Valentine, and Roman. Encrypted e-mails. Texts. Phone calls. It goes back five years.”

“Our Percival,” She emphasizes, flapping a hand between Eggsy and herself when the other agent doesn’t respond quickly enough. “Knight-of-the-round-table my uncle Percival.”

“Yeah, got that. Ta’,” Eggsy looks at her thoughtfully. 

She raises an eyebrow and cocks her head in return.

“I’m just saying, if they were working with Valentine, why didn’t their heads go ppffffttt like the rest of that lot?” Eggsy holds up his hands and mimes his own head exploding, V-day style. “Maybe Percival’s not involved, and it’s...I don’t know, some kind of frame job.”

Roxy shakes her head, sending another piece of honey blond hair free of her pony tail.

“What Merlin managed to extract from Roman’s network--audio recording, e-mail--he hasn’t gone through it all yet. But what’s there is pretty damning,” Roxy seems to suddenly find the sandy wood grain of the table extremely fascinating, but her voice remains steady. “He knew what Valentine was planning long before we were recruited. It looks like he helped get Arthur involved too.” 

“Percival, Arthur,” Eggsy ticks off his fingers, making a rude gesture with his pointer and middle fingers as he says Arthur’s name. 

Sure, manners maketh man and all that--Eggsy’s all for manners. But as far as he’s concerned, any tosser who condemns Harry Hart to die and then tries his hand at poisoning the next agent in line with a writing implement has foregone any sort of goodwill on Eggsy’s part (and furthermore can suck it). 

“Arthur died before V-day,” Eggsy continues. “We can’t know if his chip would have been activated or not. Percival was working with Valentine, so either his chip wasn’t activated or he doesn’t have one, if he got involved that early. And this guy Roman was working with Valentine too, but he’s still walking around...”

He trails off.

“We still have Merlin,” Roxy says. “And Merlin says we can trust the new Arthur--the woman from MI6--too.”

“Can’t really be sure of the other Kingsman though, can we?” Eggsy gives her a rueful little smile. “Just like old times, eh Rox?”

“I know, and don’t call me that. Merlin couldn’t call you to let you know I’d be stopping by because we couldn’t be sure who was listening in. I had to ditch my cell,” Roxy says, sounding irritated (Eggsy knows she’s proud of the high level she’s reached in candy crush during down time whilst on missions). “And my jumpsuit, because it had a tracker in it as well.”

“Where’d you get the clothes then?” 

She wrinkles her nose in disgust, “Trust me when I say you’re better off not knowing.”

“Merlin is going to contact us tomorrow at 11 am,” Her eyes dart to the clock over the kitchen stove, “Or rather, later today, with our mission, which I suspect is going to involve tracking down Percival to get some more definitive answers.”

She adds, almost hesitantly: “Eggsy, I really am very sorry about barging in like this. Percival knows where my apartment is. Merlin gave me the address and the password for the alarm. Apparently Harry kept this place off the official registry.”

Eggsy waves his hand dismissively. All things even, Roxy’s one of his best mates, and he’s always looked out for his mates. 

“You can shower upstairs in the master bath,” Eggsy answers the unasked question without pause. “I’ll find you some clean clothes. You can take the master bedroom and catch a few hours of sleep. You look like you need it. I’ll camp out on the couch down here and take first watch.” 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michelle Unwin is not a stupid woman. She knows that posh tailor shops do not offer jobs to people like the Unwins, and they certainly don’t give them gorgeous three bedroom, georgian houses in Highgate as entry-level perks. She suspects that her son’s job is less tailor than it is tinker, tailor, soldier, spy. 

The fact that she comes downstairs in the morning to find a guilty-looking young woman with a familiar voice does nothing to alleviate her suspicions. She is sitting at their dining room table, fork poised midair over a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, but stands to meet Michelle. 

“I’m very sorry to impose Ms Unwin,” she says, offering out a hand in greeting. “I’m Roxy I work with your son. We’re--”

Before Roxy can launch into whatever ridiculous cover she and Eggsy have come up with (which would be a laugh, at least--Eggsy is so, so brilliantly terrible at lying to his mum), Michelle pulls Roxy into a fierce hug.

“Call me Michelle.”

“Erm,” Says Roxy, rigid as a board and clearly uncomfortable. “Right. OK.”

“I know who you are, luv,” She explains. “I recognize your voice. You’re the one and called me on V-day. You saved my baby.”

She holds Roxy at arms length and presses her hand to the young womans cheek, “You are always welcome in this house.”

“Mum!” Eggsy says, sounding mortified as he steps into the kitchen, clutching his laptop. “What are you doing?”

“I’m assuring your tailor colleague here,” Michelle emphasizes the word tailor pointedly, “that our doors are always open to her.”

“Thank you Ms U--er--Michelle,” Roxy looks touched, if still a bit skittish. 

“And now,” Michelle says, smiling warmly at her, “I’m going to take JB for a nice long walk. Wouldn’t want to interupt your emergency Project Runway meeting or whatever this is.”

“Ta’ mum,” Eggsy says.

“Since you’re cooking,” She points a finger at Eggsy on her way out the door, JB trotting happily beside her on his lead, “I expect breakfast when I get back. And a cuppa.” 

Michelle and JB are only a few blocks from the house, strolling leisurely in the unseasonably warm spring morning, when someone steps up close behind her--too close, a little voice in her head says--and shoves something blunt into her back, just above her kidneys.

Her first reaction is confusion. Surely this must be some kind of joke. Is she being mugged? She tries to turn to see the man, but he grips her tightly by the forearm. 

“Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re--” She starts, but is cut off by the--god, she thinks it’s a gun--being jammed harder into her back. She looks around desperately, but the street is deserted.

“Don’t turn around,” A smooth, eerily calm voice says, “Don’t say a word. Do exactly as I say, and I won’t have to hurt you.”


	3. With a Little Bit of Luck

In the army, Roxy had learned what it was like to lose friends. How to be sick-scared and terrified but still keep her head. How sand sticks and sticks and sticks, beastly difficult to get rid of--she’d swear she still finds the stuff clinging to her scalp every time she brushes her hair. 

But she’d also learned that, even going through hell, she could still enjoy the little things--a good night’s rest, a full belly, a friend who’s got your six. Though she’s freaking the fuck out about Percival, she locks it down tight where it won’t spring up and snare her unexpectedly. She is comfortable in her certainty that they will get to the bottom of this mess. That all she can do right now is wait. 

“Your mother seems nice,” Roxy says, plonking herself back into her sun-warmed seat after they've cleared away the detritus of their breakfast. She stretches lazily in the sunshine filtering in through the window, feels the lovely heat of it seep through her shirt and into her back and enjoys it.

“How is she adjusting to all this?” She asks.

In addition to making small talk until Merlin can establish a secure line of communication, Roxy is genuinely curious. Other than Percival, she doesn't have any surviving family, save for a few distant cousins in Hull. Certainly no one she has to live with and keep secrets from day in and day out. 

Instead of the immediate ‘good’ or ‘fine’ she expected, Eggsy is oddly quiet, considering, as he places the laptop and baby monitor he had been holding onto the table. 

Roxy waits him out. 

“She’s doing well,” Eggsy finally says, careful. 

There is a brief and awkward pause, as though he isn't sure how much he wants to share with her, before he adds: “Really great, actually. She spent about a month in rehab for the shit Dean used to...well, she spent a month in rehab.”

“Oh,” Roxy says, because she hadn't expected that. She reaches out hesitantly, feeling just as awkward as Eggsy looks, and pats his arm. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.” 

“It’s fine,” Eggsy insists. “We’re fine. She’s healthy now, and happier than I’ve seen her in I don’t know when.” 

Eggsy gives Roxy a cheeky smile that seems a little forced, adding: “But I’m not sure how much she actually believes of my cover story. Pretty certain she thinks I’ve finally managed to leverage my good looks and charms into finding a sugar daddy.”

Roxy snorts, “Well Harry did seem rather fond of you.”

She regrets it as soon as the words are out of her mouth. Extensive though the etiquette training she had received under her mother’s watchful eye might have been, ‘’death of a mentor-slash-father-figure: broaching the subject with your super-spy work-spouse whose man-crush on said mentor had been visible from space’ had never been on the syllabus. 

She is relieved when Eggsy flashes her a genuine smile: “And he was right chuffed taking me to the tailors to commission me a bespoke suit.” 

“Introducing you to the finer things,” Roxy nods as though this conversation is not completely demented. “No doubt he pulled out the good stuff when he taught you to drink martinis too."

She leans in and asks with an exaggerated leer: "Did he make yours extra dirty?”

“Positively filthy,” Eggsy says with mock seriousness and adds, straight-faced: ”And at the tailors he seemed pretty caught up on the fact that it was my first time. The phrase ‘pop your cherry’ might have been thrown around.” 

Roxy furrows her brow and is about to ask--because honestly, what--when Eggsy decides: “He definitely wanted to be the Edward Lewis to my Vivian Ward.” 

“What?” Roxy asks, because that makes even less sense and her brain is still mucking around in the gutter from the cherry thing. 

“The Professor Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle?” He tries.

“Sorry,” Roxy shrugs. “Should I know who these people are?”

“You’ve never seen Pretty Woman? My Fair Lady?” 

“You have?”

Eggsy is saved from explaining his late-night raids of Harry’s surprisingly extensive blu ray collection (he has worked his way through all the old James Bond films, Pretty Woman, Nikita, and half of The King’s Speech) by the arrival of JB. The dogs trots happily into the dining room, dragging his lead behind him. Eggsy bends down to disentangle the leash when it catches on one of the chair legs before his brain has time to register that something is very wrong. 

Michelle is nowhere to be seen. 

“I didn’t hear the door open,” Roxy says. She moves carefully past him to take up a post by the door leading to the entranceway, gun already drawn.

“He must have come in through the dog flap--it recognizes a chip in his collar,” Eggsy draws his own weapon as he calls out; “Mum?”

But the entrance hall is empty. 

Eggsy frowns at her: “Are you sure you weren’t followed here?” 

“Yes,” Roxy says with certainty. She had dropped all of her trackers--cell phone, watch, jumpsuit, even her favorite earrings that Merlin had commissioned just for her-- like a false trail of breadcrumbs in a series of increasingly sketchy, unlicensed cabs. No one could have tailed her to the house without her noticing. She is sure of it. 

Roxy peers quickly and carefully out of the front window, not wanting to give any potential adversaries a clean shot, or alert them to the fact that Eggsy and herself have noticed something amiss. 

“Clear,” Roxy says. “Kitchen door?”

The door leads to the back garden and is out of the line of sight of the neighboring houses. Roxy had used it the previous night for that very reason. 

Eggsy engages the deadbolt so they can turn their backs to it. The door is old, but will present any who attempt entry without the keycode or a key with the difficult task of hacking through two and a half inches of well-enforced solid oak. The windows are large enough to admit entry, but the panes are laminated with a polymer similar to that used in the construction of the Kingsman’s suits and umbrellas and would require extensive effort to break. 

Eggsy grabs his umbrella from its usual spot in the claw-footed stand and passes the spare to Roxy. If it turns out that they are being burgled by garden-variety criminals with the phenomenal bad luck to chose this house, they will undoubtedly have the element of surprise, Roxy thinks--because, really Merlin; tactical combat umbrellas? 

“Eggsy?” calls Michelle’s from the back garden. Muffled as it is through the kitchen window, her voice is shaky and tight.

Eggsy and Roxy exchange a look. 

“What is it mum?” Eggsy says. His tone is impressively even and conversational, even as Roxy sees his white-knuckled grip on his gun tighten. 

He inches toward the kitchen door, and Roxy positions herself to provide cover.

“Nothing,” Michelle grunts, obviously in pain. Roxy can’t see anything outside from her position but Eggsy, peering cautiously through the window, winces. Someone has Michelle, Roxy assumes, and is hurting her in an attempt to draw them out. 

“I was just looking around the house--all around it” Michelle emphasizes the phrase ‘all around’ in a way that makes Roxy think there must be some meaning behind it, “but I’ve just noticed a few things in the back garden here that I could use your help with. Just...four or five.” 

Eggsy looks back to Roxy, holding up five fingers and motioning her to look out the window. 

Outside, Michelle--looking pissed off and scared--stands in the garden. Her left hand is raised appeasingly, but her right is being held behind her back at what must be a painful angle by the man standing close behind her. Six-foot, heavy build, Roxy notes automatically. Dressed in dark, but generally inconspicuous, clothes--nothing she’d look at twice if he passed her on the street. His face and head is covered by a balaclava. 

She sees no one else. If it is a group of five, as Michelle indicated, she wonders why they hadn't attempted entry to the house. Where they perhaps aware that it belonged to a Kingsman agent, and wary of its defenses?

‘Hiding?’ Roxy mouths silently to Eggsy as she resumes her position. 

Eggsy nods. 

Roxy thinks quickly. While none of the neighboring houses have an unobstructed view, she had noticed that a few of the windows upstairs looked directly out onto the small garden. That would give her a better angle to provide cover for Eggsy and Michelle, and get a better sense of what exactly they were dealing with. 

She waves to get Eggsy’s attention, points to herself, then points upstairs, mouthing ‘cover’.

Eggsy nods his understanding and calls out to his mother: “Give me a sec.”

“Alright,” Michelle yells back, her voice breaking on the second syllable. “Don’t--don’t take to long, luv.”

Eggsy grabs Roxy’s arm before she leaves.

“If this goes tits up,” He whispers, pressing what must be his car keys into her hand, “Promise me you’ll grab Daisy and get her to safety.”

She nods and runs up the stairs to Daisy’s room. 

As Roxy suspected, the nursery has the best view, so she scoops the protesting toddler from her bed and deposits her in the bathtub of the adjoining bathroom with a stuffed elephant and a firm warning to stay put before taking up position by the window. She opens it slowly and surveys the scene below.

Looking down, she can see only one other man--dressed identically to the first, a little shorter, and a little stockier in build--pressed flat against the house. He is almost directly below her, to the right of the kitchen door, and well out of Eggsy’s line of sight. 

She trains her gun on him as Eggsy steps out into the garden, his own weapon concealed behind his back. He is leaning on the umbrella casually, but the man behind Michelle looks down at it for just a beat too long, paying it more than might be considered a normal amount of attention to pay to an umbrella under the circumstances.

They know exactly who we are, Roxy realizes with a sinking feeling. 

“Alright mum?” Eggsy asks, and Michell nods shakily. 

No one moves or speaks as each side sizes up the other, so Eggsy continues: “I see we have guests. As it is considered good etiquette to be polite to guests, I am going to say this as politely as I am capable: if you do not let my mother go, I will personally see to it that you have an additional option when choosing which orifice from which you wish to eliminate--”

“Shut it,” The man says, wrenching Michelle's arm higher--Roxy's shoulder twinges just watching. “Put down the gun you’re holding behind your back and the bloody umbrella. Come quietly, or I shoot.” 

“Now!” He shouts, when Eggsy makes no immediate move to do so. 

The man is in the middle of saying: “Do you know how painful it is to die from a gunshot to the gut--” when Eggsy whips out his gun with unerring speed and shoots him square in the forehead. 

Michelle yelps as the man crumples with a sudden and horrible slackness to the ground. Eggsy rushes to her, gripping her in what must be a crushing hug and turning back to the house. They both jump when Roxy wings the second gunman, who falls to his back with a pained scream, clutching his ruined shoulder.

"Ta' Roxy," Eggsy waves up at her after kicking the assailant's gun out of groping range. Michelle looks as though she might be sick.

Roxy waves back: "Do you want to maybe ask your 'guest' what he's doing kidnapping people's mother's at such an early hour on a saturday?"

"I think I will," Eggsy plants a foot on the man's chest when he makes to get up, which elicits a pained groan. "Mum, why don't you go upstairs and--"

He is interrupted by the short bark of a gunshot through a silencer, followed by two more in rapid succession. Eggsy recoils in disgust from a spray of viscera as the man on the ground falls back, twitching. Michelle screams, clutching her leg. By the time Roxy looks over, Eggsy has swooped in, umbrella extended, and rushed them under its cover, so she has no idea how badly Michelle might be injured.

Unfortunately, they are pinned against the far wall, and have no way to break cover to return to the safety of the house.

The shooter is nowhere to be seen, but Roxy knows that the only line of sight is from the road. Maybe if she gets the car--

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the front door opening, which she could have sworn they had deadbolted. 

Shit, she thinks, scrambling up to position herself by the door to the nursery and put herself between the youngest Unwin and whatever threat this newest intruder poses. From the sound of it, he is just at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe she could surprise him and get herself and Daisy to the garage, but she doesn't want to chance it.

Daisy cries out, and Roxy looks over. The toddler is red-faced and fussy, but seems fine. 

Then Roxy's eyes fall on the baby monitor. 

`````````````  
Percival has one foot on the stairs when he hears something from the rear of the house. Cocking his head to one side, he pads carefully down the hallway, following the indistinct noises. It sounds like hushed voices--at least two different speakers--though he cannot make out the words.

He pauses just at the door to the room, wary of a trap. What he hears makes absolutely no sense. He pulls off his balaclava to listen better. The mask had been for the neighbor's benefit anyway. He has no intention of anyone in this house living long enough to identify him.

"Get up! You can't sit there! GET UP!" says one voice.

"Why not? It's a chair"

"No it...that is not a chair. That is....that is Saint Edward's Chair."

He peers around the doorway cautiously, but sees only an empty dining room. 

"--you trivialize...," says the first voice.

"I don't care about how many royal arseholes..." says the second.

"Damn," Percival hisses under his breath. 

Both voices are coming from a baby monitor, sitting at the far end of the table, which he plucks up and hurls at the wall. It hits with a satisfying crunch but the audio continues, taking on an echoing, tinny quality which raises a pointless, directionless fury inside of him. He turns, rushing back to the hall, only to see an open door leading out to the garage.

He makes eye contact with Roxy through the car's window for all of two seconds before she vanishes with a rev of the engine and a squeal of protest from the tires.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

"I can't believe," Eggsy shouts at her from the back seat as Roxy guns the engine, cutting across four lanes of traffic and putting the mortal fear of god almighty and jaywalking into several overly-cocky pedestrians, "you used the car as a bloody shield while daisy was inside!"

Back at Harry’s house, she had pulled a skidding u-turn, placing the vehicle squarely between the unmarked black van and the Unwins, giving them a chance to scramble into the back seat before speeding off. Percival and his colleagues had given chase, and were proving remarkably difficult to shake. 

Roxy glances to the back seat to the Unwins. 

Eggsy is putting pressure on Michelle's bulletwound--a through and through that is bleeding with worrying intensity all over the upholstery. Michelle is pale and shell shocked, but insists she feels fine and for them to stop making a fuss. Daisy is crying in her carseat, red faced but safe and unharmed. JB is sitting shotgun.

"It was the safest place for her to be," Roxy says, because it's the truth--the car is, after all, of Kingsman make--and it's not like there was any other option. 

She hangs a sharp left.

Eggsy curses impressively about the little road being one way as she swerves to avoid a bright red, double decker bus, leaving behind a bit of paint in the process.

"Have we lost them?" Roxy demands.

Eggsy turns in his seat, careful of Daisy's car seat. 

"No," Eggsy shouts. As she maneuvers them through a heavily trafficked roundabout with a deft and vicious precision that has them barely avoiding four separate collisions, He adds: "Jesus Rox."

"Michelle," Roxy glances in the rearview mirror, "How are you doing back there?"

But Michelle doesn't seem to hear the question. Instead, she reaches up and brushes a stray lock of hair from Eggsy's forehead and whispers something, the words so smashed together and fast that it takes Roxy a few seconds to realize what Michelle is saying---repeating the words over and over like a prayer.

"Don't say that mum," Eggsy tells her. "You have nothing to apologize for."

And Roxy suddenly wishes she could be somewhere--anywhere--else for an entirely different reason than she had thirty seconds ago. 

"Yes I do," Michelle says. "It's part of the program. I'm sorry about the drugs. I'm sorry about Dean. I'm--"

"Mum stop it. You're going to be fine. Stop apologizing. None of that was--"

"I let him hurt you," Michelle sounds as wrecked as her son. "I let him hurt you and I didn't leave. I didn't do a thing--"

She is interrupted by an incongruently cheerful chirp of a cell phone ringtone. Eggsy catches Roxy's eye in the mirror.

"Well it’s not me," Roxy says.

"Me either."

"It's me," Michelle digs in her pocket and holds up her cell phone. "Don't recognize the number. Probably one of those telemarketers. They always call at the worst times..."

And Roxy almost has a heart attack, because Michelle makes to hang up

"I'll take care of it,Mum," Eggsy snatches the phone from his mother's hand and puts it on speaker.

"Merlin?" Roxy asks.

"I leave you two unsupervised for less than six hours," Merlin says by way of greeting, "and this is the mess you get yourselves into?"

"You two know someone named Merlin?" Michelle asks.

"You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice, bruv," Eggsy says, sighing in relief. "We need a place to lie low."

"And quickly, please," Roxy adds. 

"That I can do,” Merlin says. “Do exactly as I say."

To the horror of Roxy's already frayed nerves, he directs them to a nearly-deserted car park outside of what appears to be the type of establishment her mother would have generously referred to as a 'gentleman's club'.

They have lost their tail, but Roxy doubts that the situation is anything other than temporary.

"I need you to count very carefully," Merlin says with the kind of enviable calm that comes from not being in a tiny car with a crying two-year old, a bleeding middle-aged woman, an angry Kingsman, and a small dog being pursued by a trio of well-trained assassins. "It's the third row, five from the end."

"Merlin--" Roxy starts, because she has some doubts as to whether parking in Merlin's special parking spot at an establishment called '’The Pink Pussycat' is really their best course of action here.

"There is no time,” Merlin insists. “Do as I say, Lancelot. Trust me."

Roxy tamps down her doubts and pulls in to the space, backward so she has a clear line of sight to the carpark entrance. She unholsters her gun as they sit through at least a minute of absolutely nothing happening.

"Merlin?" Eggsy starts, but is cut off by Merlins: "Hold your position. Ten seconds."

And that's it, because they don't have ten seconds. Roxy knows that at any second, the van is going to come speeding around the corner, and they'll be trapped. The lot only has one entrance. 

She reaches out to put the car in gear when something strange happens. The entire horizon seems to start shifting slowly upward, gathering speed. It takes her a disoriented several seconds to realise what is happening and she lets out a surprised laugh of relief.

"You installed a lift in the carpark outside of a strip club?" Eggsy asks Merlin.

"It was not a strip club at the time," Merlin sounds a little affronted at the accusation as the earth closes in over the car, as if they are being swallowed whole by the ground itself. 

They descend in total darkness.


	4. Just you wait

When the lift shudders to a halt they find Merlin waiting for them, arms folded around a clipboard in the center of the dimly-lit cavern beneath the Pink Pussycat. As the grinding of the vast, hidden mechanics of the car lift ceases, he catches sight of the state of Michelle.

"What happened?" He demands, rushing to the car to pry open the door to the back seat. 

"We need medical down here now," Roxy says, swinging herself out of the drivers side door and helping Eggsy peel a wobbly Michele out of the back seat, tacky with blood. "Michelle's been shot in the leg."

Merlin shouts something into his earpiece and two medics, a young curly-haired woman and a portly middle-aged man, appear. They have Michele, who is still protesting that everyone needs to just stop making such a fuss, and Daisy packed on to a sleek white-sheeted gurney with impressive efficiency. 

Eggsy makes to go after Michelle and the two medics when Merlin lays a staying hand on his arm: "I assure you, she will be well taken care of. I need you two to tell me exactly--"

But Eggsy whirls around, batting Merlin's hand away, the sudden clap of it echoing across the silent chamber.

"Not until you tell me what the bloody hell you were thinking," Eggsy punctuates his words with a shove that sends Merlin stumbling backward.

Merlin rights himself easily, expression dropping from concern to something inscrutable as Eggsy advances on him, points to Roxy and says: "You sent her to my home, Merlin. You sent her to my house and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they followed her there--"

"Eggsy, stop! No one--" Roxy moves to intervene, but before she's gone two steps Merlin hooks a leg behind one of Eggsy's and has the agent flat on his back on the concrete floor. 

"They shot my mother, Merlin," Eggsy growls, winded but undeterred, propping himself to elbows. 

"Galahad, listen to me: They. Didn't. Follow. Lancelot. There." 

Roxy is a little hurt at how incredulous Eggsy looks at that, as Merlin continues: "Roman had Harry's address in his unencrypted files. He also seems to know that, following Harry's death, the house was willed to you. Following our discovery at Roman's labs, they were right in assuming that Lancelot might be compelled to seek the aid of the only other agent she could trust."

"How do they have the address?" Eggsy asks, words overlapping with Roxy as she says: "Why would they have that intel?"

From the shadows at the edge of the room comes the sound of someone clearing their throat. Roxy and Eggsy startle, still jumpy after their recent encounter. Merlin, after decades of putting up with spies and their blood-deep propensity for theatrics, appears to be fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

"Kingsmans finest indeed," says a low voice. The accent is rounded and posh, making Roxy think instantly of old money. The tone is bone dry. 

"Arthur," Merlin turns and nods in greeting to the sturdily-built woman that steps out into the light. She looks to be in her late sixties, with delicate features and closely cropped silver hair. Her clothes are sensible and so darkly blue that is almost as if she materialized from the shadows at the edges of the room.

"Merlin," She returns his nod, surveying the three Kingsman.

"I trust our final member is on his way," Merlin says, his face darkening in either irritation or anger--Roxy can't tell.

Roxy and Eggsy exchange a look, but Merlin shakes his head; this is apparently neither the time or the company in which to ask questions.

"Yes. And if you are quite done rolling about on the floor," Arthur says, casting a rather disparaging look at Eggsy, "I would suggest you two get yourselves cleaned up. We will be debriefing in half an hour."

\----------------------------

Roxy meets up with Eggsy in the hall outside of the medical wing--it turns out that their refuge dates back to the war and is large enough to have wings, threading deserted and vast through the underbelly of the east end.

"How is she?" Roxy asks briskly.

"Fine," Eggsy replies. "They have this laser thing--Valentine's I think. It's brilliant; heals the muscle and skin right up. They have her pretty drugged up for the pain, but she'll be good as new in a week, they tell me."

"That's great," Roxy starts toward the conference room and Eggsy keeps pace with her, stride for stride. 

She wasn’t expecting Eggsy to continue, but he does as they wind their way down two levels through a series of maze-like passages that reek of mildew: "Apparently Roman designed it for Valentine, the chips too. Siobhan and Harry--those are the doctors--are so happy with it you'd think they'd forgotten that the man helped kill thousands of people during V-day and half the leaders of the free world besides."

Roxy hmms in agreement but adds nothing further. 

They are standing in the musty corridor outside of the conference room when Eggsy lays a hand on her shoulder, "Hang on a mo', Rox'."

"What?" She doesn't snap at him, but it is a close thing. 

She's still angry at her friend for blaming this mess on her. And, come to think of it, for getting snappy about putting Daisy in danger when Roxy had only been doing her best to protect the girl. His lashing out at Merlin also irked her--not that the man was incapable of defending himself, but Eggsy should never have behaved like that.

She turns to look at him. Eggsy looks back and his expression is earnest--even a little desperate, she realizes. Roxy swallows back every seething thing that’s on the tip of her tongue and waits to see what he’ll say.

"I'm sorry I doubted you," Eggsy says. "You're a brilliant mate and an even better Kingsman, and you should never think that I'm anything but happy that you've got my back.”

“Eggsy--” She starts, but Eggsy cuts her off, which does nothing to temper her irritation. 

“No, I mean it,” He continues. “I honestly don't know what we would have done back there if you hadn’t been with us."

And it's just a little too much for her to deal with. She’s worried about her dog, left with the sweet older couple across the hall from her flat. About Percival. About poor Michelle and Daisy. About this debriefing--afraid that, despite what Merlin said earlier, they will still somehow find a way to blame her for what happened. 

So, as frustrated as she is with Eggsy right now, Roxy doesn’t think she has the bandwidth to worry about this too.

She elbows him in the ribs: "Quit it, you giant girl. It's not like you hurt my delicate feelings."

Eggsy smiles with obvious relief, chucking her gently on the shoulder: “I know you better than that, socio. You shot a poodle.” 

“With a blank,” Roxy protests, affecting more offense than she actually feels.

“Like you knew that at the time. So we're good?"

"I think you owe me a drink or two at this point," Roxy says, turning to open the door. "And if you ever doubt me like that again, I'll shoot you as well. But yeah, we're good--"

Roxy breaks off mid sentence, her hand dropping limply from the door handle.

The conference room, in contrast to the rest of the complex Roxy has seen, is incongruously modern and well-lit. Arthur and Merlin sit at the far end, across an enormous circular table. It is darkly polished, beautiful despite obvious heavy use, and looks to be constructed from a single cross section of a massive tree. Expansive, dark screens take up most of the wall behind them. 

But Roxy doesn't really take any of it in.

Because sitting between Arthur and Merlin, neat as a pin, butter-wouldn't-melt, I-don’t-kidnap-people’s-mothers cool, is Percival.

"Hello Roxy," He says with a small nod.

Though she does not remember doing so, Roxy must draw her weapon, because Merlin is saying: "Stand down, Lancelot. I assure you, it's quite alright." 

Eggsy sounds as confused and exhausted as Roxy--like he shouldn't even be awake this early on a Saturday, let alone be dealing with assassins and apparent triple agents--as he says: "What the fuck is going on?"

\-------------------------------

Percival, new-Arthur explains, first came to MI6 with suspicions of old-Arthur's corruption six years ago. He first went undercover as a double agent five years ago.

"I could hardly pursue an in-house investigation," Percival looks a little guilty as he shifts his gaze between Roxy and Merlin, who are wearing identical frowns. "I had no way of knowing how extensive the problem might be; how far the metastasis went, as it were."

"Edwin," Roxy is shocked by Merlin's use of her Uncle's given name, "After all we've been through together, I would have thought...you could have come to me."

"I wanted to trust you," Percival sounds genuinely apologetic. "Truly I did, but the situation simply would not allow it.”

“And you, Arthur,” Merlin turns to face the carefully-blank faced woman, “You should have had me in the loop on this. Especially after we eliminated Valentine.”

He points his stylus at her accusingly. Under normal circumstances, this would not be terribly threatening. Because it is Merlin however, Roxy suspects that the stylus is rather dangerous--perhaps a discreet button that will cause Arthur’s seat to tip back into a hidden, komodo dragon-filled pit under their feet, she speculates. She imagines using it on Percival. Not to kill him, of course--he is her uncle after all, and she is terribly relieved to discover that he is not a traitor--but a bit of roughing up might be in order. 

Merlin catches the worrying, unblinking intensity with which Roxy is eyeing at the stylus and spares her a confused look before setting it down and turning back to Arthur. 

Merlin continues: “By our standard protocols and by the goodwill between our two agencies, Percival’s undercover work investigating Roman should have been brought to my attention.” 

“There was no way to know if the threat had been entirely eliminated,” Arthur points out levelly. “Until Percival ferreted out who Roman was in bed with--whether it was only my predecessor or if there were others involved--complete information blackout was our best option. The more people who knew, the greater the danger Percival faced.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait. If Edwin here,” Eggsy emphasizes Percival’s given name, clearly finding it just a little bit ridiculous, “was on our side the entire time, why did he come to my house this morning and try to kill us?”

“I only learned of Roman’s plans against you an hour or so before you yourselves did,” Percival explains, adjusting his glasses. “I am not kept entirely within Roman’s trust, you see. He is wary of the Kingsman, even more since Valentine’s death.”

“I arrived separately, only a few minutes behind,” He continues. “CCTV will confirm that. And I would have rendered aid, even if that meant killing Roman’s men and blowing my operation. In fact, that was what I intended to do before the two of you managed to give me the slip.”

“Good show, by the way,” He smiles at Roxy, pride breaking through his well-school features. 

“Thank you, Percival,” Roxy says icily, thinking longingly of komodo dragons. Piranhas. Sharks. Because god, he’s the one who brought her into the Kingsman. Why hadn't he told her?

“If we are all convinced of the veracity of Percival’s true loyalties,” Arthur says, “I suggest we get down to business.”

“What did you have in mind, marm?” Roxy asks, not taking her eyes off Percival. 

“Given the current state of affairs,” Arthur steeples her fingers together--which Roxy has never actually seen anyone do in real life-- managing to make the move look terrifying, “I think that it might be time to bring Percival’s days as a double agent to an end.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” says Percival.

“I don’t see any way to do that without bringing in Roman,” Merlin points out.

“And that,” Arthur replies, "is exactly what I intend to do." 

\----------------------------- 

Percival has plans to meet with Roman in London on Monday, which will--if all goes well--provide the three agents with the perfect opportunity to capture the scientist. Hopefully the man himself will provide some much needed clarity; Merlin's decryption program is still working on unpuzzling the contents of Roman’s secure files and Eggsy's questions as to how long the process would take had earned him a put-upon sigh and a feeling: "Eggsy, this isn't a Hollywood movie. This is sophisticated computer security--I can't simply mash a few buttons, wave my hands, and call it 'hacking'", air quotes and all.

Saturday evening finds them camped out in the hospital wing around Michelle's bed, marathoning Sherlock on a laptop confiscated from Merlin's office and doing their best to finish the biggest carton of chicken Marsala the little Indian place down the street offers. Michelle is still mostly out of it, but seems to be enjoying the company. 

Amelia--who had delivered the takeout with a grin and an amused: "You two look like you've seen a ghost"--is curled into one of the hospital chairs chewing on a piece of naan, her heels discarded on the floor beside her.

"So," Roxy finally says, "Not dead, then?"

"I've died four times. They do it every recruitment," Amelia replies blithely, re-adjusting the napkin she has laid out over her charcoal-grey pencil skirt. "Last time I was crushed to death. Before that, I was poisoned--that one was actually quiet fun."

"Fun," Roxy repeats flatly. "Right."

"But you're from IT," Eggsy says, in a way that sounds more like "is everyone employed by this agency completely mental?"

"Believe me, I am more than qualified," Amelia assures them. "With all that the IT department has to put up with from you lot, it is one of our time-honored traditions to fuck with you guys at every given opportunity.”

“One time,” Amelia gestures with the naan, “we convinced Harry Hart that--"

"But with the drowning, that's only three," Roxy interrupts her. "What was the fourth?"

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," Amelia leans in toward Roxy and winks, which is honestly a little breath-taking. 

Even if Roxy dislikes the woman on principle for her part in recruitment--which had honestly been the hardest thing for Roxy, thinking she had left Amelia behind to drown, scared and alone--Amelia, mischievous grin and all, is quiet lovely. Before Roxy can regather her scattered wits to reply, Amelia waves her hand excitedly a the laptop.

"Shhh," She hisses. "Mycroft is coming up. This is great. One of the retired guys from PR helped write the show--just wait until you see the umbrella."


	5. The Rain in Spain

Merlin feels the beginnings of what promises to be a true clusterfuck of a headache stir behind his left eye as he finishes scanning the first batch of Roman's decrypted files. 

Between his regular top-secret work for the Kingsmen, which he keeps carefully tucked away from the rest of the world, and this mad mess, which he has been working double time to keep carefully tucked away from the Kingsmen, he's running on fumes, espresso, and the half-hour kip he'd managed on the train from the manor to London that morning.

The files freed from their decryption thus far do nothing to ease Merlin’s general unease about the upcoming mission. 

The first proves to be a set of patient files for Gazelle, born Yasmin Zidane, 1982 in a small village in northern Algeria. 

Merlin reads with interest, curious how Yasmin--the gap-toothed wean, hugging her little brother with chubby arms and smiling brightly in a family photo--had become the formidable and deadly Gazelle.

During an increasingly bloody civil war in the 90’s, Yasmin’s village had been set upon by the Islamic Salvation Army. The resulting massacre had taken Yasmin’s family and left the young girl an amputee. Shortly thereafter, she was brought to the states for treatment through humanitarian efforts. 

Though taken only a few years after the first, the photos here seem to show an entirely different girl, returning the camera’s gaze with a hollow, thousand-yard stare. The file notes a transfer to New York Presbyterian Hospital after her condition took a turn for the worse, where she had first crossed paths with Roman.

Would she have survived if Roman hadn't found her there? Merlin wonders how her life might have played out. If she might have found some measure of peace and made a new home, a new family. If she might have remained Yasmin. 

Merlin earmarks the detailed notes in the file--enhancements Roman had made after taking the young woman into his care-- for further examination by someone with a stronger background in the biomedical sciences. 

The second file he scans rapidly. It chronicles the experimental treatments Roman had performed on cancer patients at the same hospital. These had ultimately led to his dismissal from the institute but are apparently what first put him on Valentine’s radar. 

Merlin closes the two files and stretches out a crick in his neck, which cracks in a rather alarming way. This jolts JB--who, to Merlin's surprise, had wandered in about a half hour ago and to bunker down at Merlin's feet--out of his peaceful slumber with a confused little bark.

"Sorry old boy," Merlin says aloud, grateful that at this hour at least no one is around to see him apologizing to his junior agent's dog for the mysterious creaks and groans of his aging body.

Sometimes, it seems as if only yesterday he had been as young as Eggsy and Roxy. Just as wide-eyed and excitable. Just as uncertain. Funny--he had never thought of Harry as young. At least not in the way he sees his two newest agents now. Though Merlin and Harry were similar in age and were recruited within months of one another, Harry's remarkable self-control had always lent him a calm well beyond his years.

"Like Buddha with a Walther PPK, he was," he murmurs to the dog. 

At least until everything went FUBAR--Harry's lethal fury breaking like a tidal wave over a little, god-fearing church in the sleepy backwater detritus of Kentucky. 

He scratches the pug behind the ears for good measure before turning back to the screen where, despite his best coaxing, a single stubborn file refuses to resolve itself from the unintelligible gibberish of its encryption. 

He digs the heel of his palm into his left eye, dry swallows an aspirin, and gets to work. 

\----------------

That afternoon, Eggsy finds Roxy in the spacious gym, uppercutting a worn punching bag with enough force to send it rocking in its chain moorings with each blow.

Eggsy had been planning on some weight lifting, just enough to take the edge off of his incipient cabin fever, but what the hell.

"Want to maybe try something that can hit back?" Eggsy calls to her, dropping his bag and beginning to wind the wraps around his hands. 

Roxy turns, shrugs, and drops into a slight crouch--guard up--to circle him.

Eggsy mirrors her movements and leads with a fake out to her right before whipping around with a straight punch to her left. 

Roxy blocks the blow with ease, taking the opening to land a punch to Eggsy's diaphragm. Or rather she would have landed a punch if Eggsy hadn't spun out of the way, using the momentum to swing around with a sweeping, low kick that almost takes Roxy out at the ankles.

"You've been practicing," Roxy returns to her wary circling after jumping out of the way.

Instead of answering, Eggsy opts for a roundhouse kick. The next thing he knows, he's on his back on the mats. Though they are marginally more yielding than the concrete floor, his bruises from Merlin still ache at the contact.

"You broadcast your kicks," Roxy says from somewhere to his right, "Keep at it when you're training. Stick to punches or knee strikes in the meantime--they're faster, and you have the muscle to back it up."

Against Roxy, Eggsy is technically bigger, stronger, and theoretically faster. In the actual chaos of a melee, Roxy would never engage in hand to hand combat with someone of Eggsy's size if she could help it. But here, Roxy has the advantage of training; she hasn't missed a krav maga class in years. 

She puts him down on the mat once more, then has him tap out from a choke hold from--jesus, Eggsy thinks--between her thighs once after that before he is finally able to knock her off her feet. 

"oof," She says, which is rather embarrassing because she'd actually meant to say 'good'.

"Alright Rox’?" He offers her a hand up, and this is such a rookie move that he only has himself to blame when she sends him slamming to the mat beside her with a surprised grunt. 

Roxy still chalks it up as improvement, because at least he's stopped physically cringing every time he lands a hit on her.

"Fine," Roxy says. 

Eggsy's wheezing take on a distinctly quizzical tone. He may not be able to tell a bulldog from a pug, but Eggsy Unwin is far from stupid, thank you very much.

Roxy throws a forearm over her eyes, blocking out the harsh buzzing glow of the overhead fluorescents.

"Not fine," She admits into the comforting darkness. 

"Edwin?" Eggsy asks, out of breath but still managing to convey how ridiculous he finds the name. Roxy thinks this is a bit hypocritical from someone who insists on being called after the bastardized adjective of a breakfast food.

Were it anyone else, Roxy thinks, she'd pack everything up. Tuck it away to be laid out, characterized and evaluated in privacy. But it's Eggsy. 

"He should have told me," Roxy brings up her other arm and rubs the heels of her palms into her eyes."He trained me to be a Kingsman, brought me in for recruitment--so why didn't he tell me, if he thought the service was rotting from the inside out?"

"I think he wanted someone in the Kingsman he could trust, yeah?" Eggsy says, gently laying a hand over one of her wrists. "Probably didn't want to tell you unless he absolutely had to. To keep you safe, like." 

"I don't need protecting," She lets her arms thump down to her sides and turns her head to look at him with a frown.

"I know that," Eggsy says, propped up on his elbows and peering down at her. "My thoroughly-kicked arse knows that. And I'm sure he knows that too. But it's family, you know. You're supposed to look after your own."

Something about the way he says it, the flash of guilt across his face, prompts Roxy to say:"Eggsy, what happened to Michelle wasn't your fault."

"Wasn't it, though?" He asks bitterly. "It happened because I'm a kingsman. 'Cus she and Daisy live with me."

He looks away: "I'm starting to think Harry maybe had the right idea, living all alone like he did." 

"It's doesn’t need to be either or," Roxy twists up to stand on her feet. "If you think they'll be safer living somewhere away from you, you have the money to set them up quite comfortably."

Eggsy flops back on to the mat, arms akimbo, considering: "I suppose."

“Don't cut them out entirely," Roxy offers him a hand up. "Believe me, you'll regret it Eggsy. They need you, and what you have is...it's really lovely."

She doesn't say how envious she'd been of the Unwin's quiet domesticity, or how it feels to get little glimpses of it from the outside--the nostalgia and longing rolling over her like the ache of a poorly healed fracture . Eggsy seems to understand anyway. He lets her help him to his feet and gives her hand a gentle squeeze.

"Well, aren't you two just the sweetest thing."

Roxy jerks her hand from Eggsy's, face flushing as she turns to see Amelia leaning casually against the door frame of the gym. She is wearing a gorgeous black wrap dress, sensible low heels, and a curiously ugly expression that Roxy thinks looks a lot like jealousy--but only for a second.

Her face shifts, teasing with a sly grin: "Does Merlin know?"

Eggsy, bless his heart, just looks confused.

"Did you need something, Amelia?" Roxy asks, picking up her towel and slinging it around the back of her neck, suddenly and intensely aware of just how sweaty she is.

Amelia gives her a slow once over. Roxy knows that her tank top is soaked through, in the front under her breast, in large, dark crescents under her arms, and what feels like all along her back as well. Her hair is a mess, she must stink, and she needs to get out of this room--which now feels much too small--fifteen minutes ago. 

How long had Amelia been standing there?

"I was just stopping by to let your know that your suits have arrived for tomorrow," Amelia shrugs."And since I have apparently been assigned the additional role of delivery girl for the duration of our stay in these lovely accommodations--"

Amelia looks disgusted as she brushes a smudge of rust off of her shoulder--transfer from the door frame--and continues:"--I thought I'd ask if there were any requests for where you get take-out from tonight."

They settle on Chinese.

Later, Roxy runs into Amelia shouldering her way out of the small, person-sized lift to the outside world. 

"Where does that even come out, topside?" Roxy asks, bracing a hand against the doors threatening to crush Amelia and the two giant, greasy brown paper bags she is clutching in her arms.

"Would you believe me if I told you it was an old rotary phone booth, which will only begin its descent after you dial zero-zero-seven? A decidedly difficult task in this case," Amelia emphasizes the two bags.

"Not a chance," Roxy moves to help when Amelia holds out both, apologetic.

"If you wouldn't mind--there's a love," She says as Roxy takes them. "You still have a lot to learn about the Kingsmen's peculiar brand of humor, then."

"I've learned more than enough about their willingness to deceive," Roxy adjusts her grip on the bags pointedly, but Amelia doesn't let go, instead letting their hands brush for just a second too long.

"The tests during recruitment are designed to sort out those who have what it takes from those who do not," Amelia doesn't remove her hand. "In this case, they found you, Roxy."

"I thought I left you to die."

"I'll have you know that, if Eggsy had not broken that window, I had instructions to be...amenable to being revived had one of you noticed my need of rescue. There is no doubt in my mind that you would have saved me."

Amelia squeezes Roxy's hand, which is sweet, really sweet--but actually kind of hurts. Roxy hadn't wrapped her hands particularly well before laying into the punching bag, and it shows across the knuckles of both her hands--skin bruised and broken open in several places.

"From boxing" Roxy explains when she can't repress a wince, asking: "Not joining us for dinner tonight?"" 

"I have duties elsewhere," Amelia runs curious fingers over Roxy's busted knuckles as if is the most natural thing in the world, and Roxy should stop her--she really should. But Amelia is surprisingly gentle, her touch wonderfully warm against the bruised, sensitive hollow between her ring and little fingers. God, Roxy thinks, it's been ages.

But Amelia pulls away to check her watch, breaking the charged contact and leaving Roxy confused, at an unexpected loss.

"To which I am already seven minute late," Amelia sighs and smiles at Roxy, setting something alive twisting inside her chest, "but I would much rather be here. I won't be back until tomorrow after your mission. Sadly, Agent Galahad will have you all to himself for the evening."

Roxy snorts: "We're not...It's not like that."

"Oh?" Amelia smile widens, "Then I would remissed if I did not wish you luck."

She leans forward until Roxy can feel the warmth radiating from her skin, and closer still. Until Roxy's arms, still clutching the takeout bags, are trapped between them. And Roxy, with her back to the wall, finds that she doesn't mind in the slightest.

Amelia presses a kiss to Roxy's cheek, so light and fleeting Roxy's half sure she imagined it before moving in to whisper, her breath warming Roxy's neck as she says: "Good luck, Lancelot."

\------------------

And it must have been ages longer than she'd thought, because Roxy can still feel the touch of Amelia's kiss on the skin of her cheek for hours afterward. Through dinner--Chow Fun, in Michelle's room again. As she drift off to sleep. 

Even as she pulls on her suit the next morning. 

The suit is a soft, solid heather grey. The jacket has narrow lapels and is slightly cropped in a manner that the tailor--unfazed by her appearance in what was ostentatiously a men's shop-- had assured Roxy would flatter her long legs and narrow hips. The slim pants taper slightly to break just over the tops of her dark flats.

Her boyish figure had been a source of expectant concern to Roxy during secondary school, which had mellowed out into grudging acceptance sometime after A-levels. But looking at herself in the mirror for the first time after putting on the suit had been different. She had loved the thing with an irrational, consuming passion from the second it had been delivered into her hands. Loves how she looks in it. How powerful she feels, wrapped in its bespoke embrace, tailored just for her.

As she pulls on the jacket over her cream-colored top, something presses foreignly into her belly, crinkling like crumpled cellophane. She reaches into the front interior pocket and pulls out a small package wrapped in brown paper tied with a thin, pearly pink ribbon. She flips over the attached card to read:

Thought you might like these. I had them custom made, and they suit you much better than those tortoiseshell monstrosities they have you wearing currently. Wish I could be on the other end of the line today.  
Very truly yours,   
-A

Curious, she unravels the package to find a pair of glasses. They are darkly violet, looking black to all but the closest scrutiny. The lenses are large and slightly upturned, cat-eyed, with small mother-of-pearl rectangular insets in the upper corners near the delicate hinges of the gracefully curved arms.

With a smile, she puts them on. 

\--------------

The decision by Arthur to turn Roman from a thorn in the side of the Kingsmen into an asset was not met with universal agreement. 

Were the dissent to come from anyone else, Merlin would have issued a sharp reprimand and a firm refresher course on the chain of command. But Eggsy and Roxy are something of a soft spot for Merlin, though he would be loathe to admit it aloud.

"I agree that the man is dangerous," Merlin allows after their mission briefing, frowning at the pair of them over the tops of his spectacles. "We know that better than most, as we've seen his creations up close and personal. The microchips he developed with Valentine. Gazelle."

"But we've also seen the remarkable benefit Roman's inventions can bring--his healing device." Merlin focuses his attention on Eggsy. "Imagine that kind of power in the right hands. Imagine the lives that could be saved." 

"He helped kill thousands of people," Eggsy says stubbornly as Roxy adds: "Roman knew what Valentine was planning, it wasn't as if the man was forced to cooperate against his will."

"I understand you feel strongly about the matter," Merlin's tone is understanding, but his expression unyielding. "I share your concerns. But what you feel should not be allowed to come in the way of what must be done. The decision has been made. I expect you both to perform your duties as Kingsmen and to provide tactical field support to Percival today."

Eggsy and Roxy reach the abandoned, riverside warehouse well before the arranged meeting time. Their orders are to lay low as to not spook their quarry, to secure and maintain the perimeter, and to keep an eye out for potential threats so that the senior agent is not blindsided while trying to talk Roman into coming quietly in from the cold. 

Eggsy is stationed on the roof of the building across the street, Roxy in the small hallway adjacent to the large, central room in which Percival has arranged to meet the scientist.

Everything seems to be on track when Percival arrives.

“Galahad? Lancelot?” He checks in over their radios from the center of the vacant room. 

"Warehouse is clear," Roxy reports.

"Roman's arriving now," Eggsy tells them. "And he brought one of his mates with him. Tall, decked out in tactical gear. Definitely armed--I see at least a handgun. But I can't get a good look at his face for ID, the guy's wearing some kind of helmet. Anything on your end, Mister Wizard?"

"Height, size, and movement analysis indicate that this is our shooter from Saturday," Merlin says after a minute or so. "So far I've got an 86% match between Galahad's live feed and video from a private security camera one of the neighbors had trained on the ally when the attack occurred. I'm running it against other video feed in our system on the off chance that we've encountered him before."

"Copy that," Percival murmurs.

When Roman enters the room Percival speaks pleasantly, as if greeting an old friend: "Roman. Won't your friend be joining us today?"

Roxy can just hear Roman's reply, relayed into her earpiece. 

His Russian accent is thick despite years spent living in the States and England: "I prefer we speak man to man. He has other business to attend to. Though I am curious why you think I would need protection. Are we not just talking?"

"I think we can dispense with the playacting. You have four doctorates, consorted with a madman, and turned a dying war orphan into one of the most dangerous assassins of the past decade. Forgive me if I don't fall for the hair-brained academic act."

("It would have been loads more convincing," Eggsy mumbles into their open channel, "If he hadn't been kicked out of academia for trying to build cyborgs out of the cancer patients."

"Maintain radio silence, Galahad," Merlin hisses.)

Roman laughs: "I suppose we can, if you tell me why we’re here today."

"It's over, Roman. Valentine is dead. Gazelle is dead. Whatever you were working on for the late Arthur is forfeit. If you agree to come over quietly, the Kingsmen are prepared to--"

But Roman giggles--actually giggles, an unerring sound from a grown man in his fifties. Roxy can’t see what’s going on, but feels herself tense. He sounds utterly unhinged. 

"'Whatever I was working on'" He mocks, before giggling again: "'Whatever I was working on'? You mean you really don't know?"

\--------------------

"--you really don't know?" Roman's voice echoes from the speakers of Merlin's laptop. 

The frenetic glee on his face is disturbing enough to trip every lizard-brain alarm in Merlin's head, even viewed second-hand through Percival's glasses.

A quick glance to his desktop reveals that Roman's body guard is stalking the peripheral rooms and hallways of the warehouse, moving across the fields of view of the discrete cameras Roxy and Eggsy had carefully placed earlier. He is relieved to see that the man is nowhere near Roxy, and pleased to note that his identification program has collected more data, which should make his analysis run more rapidly and accurately, even without data for facial recognition.

"Merlin, any clue as to what Roman's talking about?" Roxy whispers into her comm. Her screen, on the desktop's second monitor, reveals only the darkened hallway--little bigger than a closet, in which she is stationed. 

"Working on it. Both of you hold your positions unless Percival calls for assistance. It sounds as though Roman is fond enough of his own voice to tell us everything with very little effort from our end." 

Merlin turns when an alert beeps from his desktop, indicating a possible match for Roman's man.

He checks the associated video feed from the archive: the unsolved murder of an american journalist named Ruby Greaves in Washington D.C. two weeks ago. Their man was caught on surveillance video following Greaves into the alley where she was killed. His program reports a 91% match.

Merlin is skimming Greaves’ profile when the program issues another alert: the alleged suicide of a wealthy investment banker one month ago in Berlin. Again, their unknown man is seen entering the Hotel Adlon Kempinski an hour before John London met his demise at the abrupt end of a five-story swan-dive from the safety-barred window of his suite. An 89% match.

Merlin barely has time to take in the barest details of the case before he gets another alert: a fatal mugging in Prague. Only a partial visual in the corner of a video feed from a camera just outside the Starý židovský hřbitov--the jewish cemetery nestled deep within the old town center-- but an 84% match. 

And another--he only has time to note the location: Tokyo, the National Diet building, before another alarm sounds. 

Paris, 94%.

Moscow, 95%.

Pretoria, 86%. 

Seven confirmed matches. Seven confirmed deaths. But not once has the man’s face been captured. 

He is just about to alert his agents when another notification beeps shrilly. 

Merlin scans the report in utter disbelief. 

His program is reporting a 98% match to video feed from the Kingsmen’s personal archive, a recording from Gawain’s glasses during a joint mission with another Kingsman agent seventeen months previous. 

It has to be a false positive. Has to be. There’s just no way--

But before he can process this new development further, movement draws his eye to the monitor tracking Roman’s associate. 

He dismisses the obvious false positive and opens the comm to Eggsy’s radio.

\-----------------

“Galahad,” Merlin’s voice cuts into the conversation between Percival and Roman coming in through Eggsy’s earpiece, “Roman’s bodyguard is exiting the warehouse. I want eyes on him.”

“Copy,” Eggsy replies. “I can’t get a good visual from up here. I’m going to get closer.”

“Good. I would urge caution.”

Eggsy rises from the prone position he had assumed behind the scope of his rifle on the roof--which is hot, baked over by a rare London appearance of the mid-day sun--and makes his way to ground level.

\---------------

“Lancelot, Roman’s bodyguard has left the building,” Merlin tells Roxy. “Galahad is tracking him. I’m not sure what Roman is planning.”

“I’ll do a sweep of the building,” Roxy says. “See if he left behind any surprises that our cameras didn't pick up.”

“Don’t stray too far.”

“Roger that,” Roxy nods. “I don’t like leaving Percival alone with Roman.”

Roxy stalks silently through the darkened corridors surrounding the vast central chamber of the warehouse, quite literally following in her quarry's footsteps through the heavy accumulation of dust and debris in several places. 

While the bones of the building have remained stable enough, the thin metal sheeting serving as walls has been ravaged by rust. Most of the wooden support has been eaten away by rot, leaving the sheeting to twist and buckle wretchedly into itself, twice completely blocking Roxy’s progress until she’d carefully clambered over the obstacles. 

Halfway over a precariously placed I-beam, she spots a blinking light half-hidden under a cracked sheet of plywood. 

“Merlin,” She hisses into her comm, “little help here?”

\---------------

Merlin feels the headache, staved off earlier with a couple of aspirin, creeping back with a vengeance as he examines Roxy’s screen. It shows a timer--counting down from five minutes forty seconds--wired to three large bricks of what appear to be semtex. 

“There are too many wires,” Roxy says, leaning in close so that Merlin can take a look. “And I have no idea if there are others. If this thing goes off, are we looking at civilian casualties?” 

Merlin runs calculations in his head: “The explosion shouldn't extend beyond the warehouse, and the surrounding area is largely deserted. You three are the only occupants--evacuate NOW Lancelot.”

But Roxy has already leapt to the ground. The video feed on Merlin’s computer jumps intermittently as she sprints, going full tilt back toward the entrance to the large central room. 

\--------------

Percival maintains an even tone as he tells the still-giggling Roman: “No, I can’t say that I know what you and Arthur were working on. For all that he was a traitor to our organization, the man was still an exceptional spy. He took his secrets to the grave.” 

“If I had known you were coming here just to ask me to switch sides--” Roman sneers.

With Roxy's discovery relayed over his radio, Percival knows that they have no time for this. 

“I’m not asking,” Percival says, leveling his gun at Roman. “We are bringing you in, willing or no. I do not particularly care either way.”

\-----------------

Eggsy is momentarily at a loss when he reaches the street. Peering out from behind a car, he doesn't see the target anywhere. He is about to ask Merlin when a dark SUV pulls around the back entrance to the warehouse. 

But plotting the shortest distance between himself and a drivable vehicle to give chase proves to be a wasted effort on Eggsy’s part. The man parks the car, leaving it idling as he gets out and opens up the boot.

His back is to Eggsy, effectively screening his actions from view.

Carefully, Eggsy creeps closer.

\--------------

“That is not a good idea,” Roman says, looking down at the gun pointing at his chest. 

“I’ve always been a fan of the simplest solution to a problem at hand,” Percival counters. “This is simple: either disarm the bomb and come with us quietly or I shoot you and you come with us regardless.”

“You look like a man who appreciates a well-tailored suit. I would hate to ruin my jacket,” Roman slowly undoes the button to flip open the front as he says: “It’s new, you see.”

Under the bulky jacket, Roman is wearing a vest studded with small packets of plastic explosives. He reaches into his pocket as Percival makes to shoot.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Roman tsks, waggling the fingers on his left hand--the one that isn't poised to depress what is presumably the trigger mechanism to the bomb. “I assume you are familiar with the dead-man’s switch?”

Percival doesn’t lower his weapon, but he doesn’t shoot Roman either. Doing so would loosen Roman’s grip on the sensor, activating the device. 

“Good,” Roman backs slowly toward the back door. “I will be leaving now."

"Roman, you are making a mistake," Percival tries to reason. "You have attracted the attention of people other than the Kingsmen. I can't guarantee they will be so generous when they find you."

"How considerate. I was just going to have my man shoot you in the heart," He looks thoughtful. "But I like you Percival. I think I'll leave you like I found myself after V-day: all alone and--what is the phrase--without a leg to stand on." 

"You will have--" Roman checks his watch, "just under three minutes to make your way outside of the blast radius."

There is an echoing bang, the tinkling patter of glass hitting the concrete as the building's rear window shatters, and a sudden, white-hot pain that arcs from Percival's left ankle all the way to his hip, jarring and electric. He lets out a guttural bellow of pain and stumbles backward, landing hard on his tailbone.

"Oops. Looks like his aim was a little off," Roman calls back over his shoulder as he exits the room. "Ah well. Best of luck."

\----------------

Eggsy sees a flash the rifle just as Roman says:" I was just going to have my man shoot you in the heart." 

He runs forward, tackling the man sideways against the opened car door he was using to steady the gun.

But it's too late. The shot rings out and he hears Percival's cry in stereo--faintly muffled from inside the warehouse and so sharply from his earpiece that it's as though Percival is right there; five feet away and possibly dead or dying because Eggsy wasn't fast enough. 

Eggsy manages to wrench the rifle out of the sniper's grasp, only for it to be knocked out of his hands a second later. He lands a punch to the man's stomach, which winds him for just long enough for Eggsy to draw his handgun.

But the man twists, pinning Eggsy's hand to the metal body of the car and doing something complicated and extremely painful with his fingers, forcing Eggsy to loosen his grip. Eggsy makes a grab for the man's gun belt with his other hand, but fumbles the weapon to the carpeted interior of the car as his other arm is pinned. 

If Eggsy had the luxury of time, he'd spend some of it being astonished--he's no lightweight. His opponent may be taller, but he can't have more than twenty pounds on Eggsy. Yet Eggsy is being held against the car with a disproportionate strength. 

But Eggsy doesn’t have the luxury of time, so he defaults to instinct honed by a childhood of schoolyard scuffles and back alley fistfights. Stronger or not, he's never met an opponent who wasn't thrown by a good old fashioned, down and dirty headbutt. 

This guy proves to be no exception. When Eggsy makes contact, the grip holding him down loosens enough for him to wrench free and follow through with a satisfyingly solid elbow strike to the head. 

With some space between them, Eggsy attempts another tried and tested favorite--the swift kick to the unmentionables. Hardly Kingsman approved, but it's gotten Eggsy out of trouble before. 

But goddamn if Roxy wasn't right about the kicking thing, because the next thing Eggsy knows, he's flying through the air. He has just enough time to notice that his glasses are not making the journey with him--they must have been knocked to the side--before he slams, hard, into the brick wall of the alleyway. His head hits with such force that his vision goes wonky for a second. 

He hears the door to the warehouse open, and Roman say: "Take care of him. I expect you at the rendezvous in twenty."

No reply is given, but the rev of a car engine growing fainter and fainter announces Roman's departure. 

Eggsy scrambles for his footing as the man advances on him.

\-------------

Roxy skids to a stop beside Percival in the main room.

"My ankle," He waves a dismissive hand at her worry, as if getting shot is just another Monday as far as he's concerned. "I can't stand on it."

Roxy looks back at the trail of blood Percival left, crawling, as he made his way to the door. She doesn't have the words for what she'd do to Roman--isn't sure the words even exist to characterize the fury that rises up like bile at the sight.

"Come on," Roxy hoists one of his arms over her shoulders and helps him hobble to a precarious stand, pausing to scoop up Percival's discarded umbrella. "Up you get."

"Two minutes," Merlin reports. "You should manage if you can get out the front door and a few meters from the building."

They manage to set a rather brisk pace, all things considered, with Percival doing his best to hobble along and Roxy doing her best to ignore his groans. 

They almost make it out the doorway before Percival collapses. 

"Thirty seconds," Merlin warns as Percival tells Roxy: "Leave me. GO."

"Not a chance," Roxy grabs his arm and drags a protesting Percival as far as she can in fifteen seconds--getting them to a small alcove just off the sidewalk a few feet outside the front entrance, where she stops. It will have to do.

"Roxanne Elizabeth Giles--" Percival actually tries to push her away--she supposes stubbornness runs strong in the family-- as she extends the umbrella over them.

"I'm not leaving you," Roxy huddles as small as she can behind the thin black fabric. "Now pull in your arm."

Roxy counts backward in her head.

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

There is a curious pause. Just long enough for her to wonder if the bomb had been a fake; for Percival to say: "What in--"

The sound of the explosion is a physical force Roxy feels rattle her sternum.

\-----------------

Merlin grips his desk so tightly he fears the edging will crack, splitting his attention between Roxy's, Percival, and Eggsy's video feeds.

He barely notices the pop-up indicating that the decryption on the final file from Roman's network is complete. Irrelevant, he dismisses. There will be plenty of time for that later. 

But one of the file names catches his eye just as he is about to minimize the window.

He opens the documents, keeping half an eye on his agents as he scans them. 

What he sees nearly makes his heart stop.

He reads it twice over, then a third time, just to be sure. Hardly registering the fact that he’s accidentally pried the plastic edging away from the body of his workstation. 

Jesus. He has to tell them--has to let them know.

Roxy responds by yelling into her comm, courtesy of temporary hearing loss caused by the blast: "MERLIN, WE'RE ALRIGHT, BUT I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING. I'M GOING TO GO HELP GALAHAD."

Eggsy's glasses had apparently been knocked away in the scuffle, but are still recording video crookedly from the dirty cobblestones of the alley.

"Come on Eggsy, pick them up lad." Merlin mutters. "Pick them up."

\-------------------

The explosion throws Eggsy and his opponent, but Eggsy recovers faster. 

He tucks into a roll, past Roman's bodyguard to his glasses. They sit crookedly on his face, frames hopelessly bent, when he jams them on. The audio is malfunctioning--all he can hear is static.

Damn.

He takes a page out of Roxy's book, testing the low, sweeping kick she had used to knock him on his arse during sparing the previous day. But it is sidestepped with a dancer's grace.

Eggsy rolls to the side to avoid a full-bodied, heavy punch to the pavement precisely where his head had been scant seconds before.

A tight backwards roll lands him in a crouch, which he turns into a sprinter's starting stance to launch himself toward the wall directly behind the sniper. 

The grip provided by the flat-bottomed oxfords leaves much to be desired--he should really talk to Merlin about getting that fixed--but it is enough.

He wallruns up the bricks until his feet are about level with the man's shoulders and tic-tacs, pushing off and spinning so that his heel whams squarely into the man's helmeted head.

The helmet is knocked clean off.

Eggsy doesn't get a good look at the man's face-- just the impression of pale skin and a darkly-stubbled scalp criss-crossed by thick, raised ropes of scar tissue.

"EGGSY," Yells Roxy, a few orders of magnitude louder than is strictly called for, from the mouth of the alley. "GET DOWN!"

Eggsy complies, pressing himself flat against the cobblestones.

She fires off a shot, and would have caught the man dead-center mass had he not already been in motion. Instead, the bullet strikes his shoulder. But he keeps moving, launching himself at Roxy and knocking her to the ground. The gun slips from her grasp. 

Eggsy lunges for it.

"Get off of her," He growls, leveling the pistol against the back of the man's head. "Turn around."

The man slowly gets to his feet, hands raised, and turns to face Eggsy. 

Eggsy's hand falters, because staring back at him is a dead man.

"Harry?" Eggsy's voice breaks a little on the name.

In Eggsy's laws of the universe, compiled over nearly two and a half decades of careful observation, there have been many uncertain variables. The shifting temper of a new stepfather at age twelve. Whether there would be food on the table or a new batch of pills on Michelle's tongue at fifteen. The mutable and ever-changing exigencies that came with joining a bloody spy agency at twenty-three. 

One of the rare constants, for however brief a time, had been Harry Hart.

But there's no flicker of recognition in Harry's face. No trace of the familiar, warm fondness there as he returns Eggsy's stare.

Instead, Harry leverages Eggsy's hesitation to brace a forearm against his neck and slam him back into the wall. Eggsy’s head, already bruised from the previous contact, connects so hard that Eggsy sees stars.

And this is it, Eggsy thinks, crumpling to the ground. This is how it ends for him. He wishes he would have had time for a proper goodbye, but at least Michelle and Daisy will have his savings to fall back on--

But the expected coup de grace never comes. Instead he hears the roar of an engine shaking itself to life and the shuffling retreat of hurried footsteps. He looks up.

Roxy is driving the warehouse's forklift--which had been parked some way down the street, and seems to have survived the blast unharmed-- through the tiny alleyway, boxing their assailant into the dead end of the corridor.

Eggsy lurches to his feet, which sends his head spinning worryingly. His arms seem too far away, disjointed from the rest of his body as he grasps for Roxy's handgun.

But the man--Harry?--injured and outnumbered, leaps on to the raised tongue of the forklift. From there, he clambers to the roof of the cab and leaps, just barely catching hold of the rusted-out fire escape. He is is up it in a flash, disappearing over the top of the building. 

The next thing Eggsy sees is Roxy's worried face hovering above him, going grey around the edges. 

Funny, he doesn't remember falling to the ground, he thinks as Roxy's hands carefully stabilize his head.

"EGGSY," She says, too loud and yet somehow very removed. "EGGSY."

The rest is darkness.


	6. I Could Have Danced All Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons. ”   
> ― Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love
> 
> “That love is suffering is easy to see...”  
> ― Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love

"I want to read the files," Eggsy insists from his bed in the medical wing of the stripclub bunker. "I need to know what they did to him."

"That's not a good idea, lad," Merlin says, gentler than Eggsy's ever heard him and clutching his tablet to his chest. "Perhaps after--"

"I got to know, Merlin," Eggsy repeats, completely reasonable. 

Merlin looks down at Eggsy, at his bruises and his bandaged hands, which have twisted themselves into the thin white hospital sheets. There is concern on his face and a little pity, which is somehow much, much worse than when Merlin is knocking him to his arse with a parachute.

"I'm pleased to see you doing so well, Eggsy," Merlin says. "Try to get some rest. We'll discuss this further after your release from medical."

And the Scottish bastard just walks away. Not even slowing when Eggsy's pleas escalate to hurling every Welsh profanity his mother ever taught him, by example, down the hallway. Only hesitating when Eggsy yells: "I deserve to know."

But he doesn't stop.

Dizzy and spent, Eggsy rests his aching head on his knees and tries to remember how to breath.

Eggsy knows Merlin and Harry had been close. 

It was obvious in the way Merlin used to let Harry invade his personal space-- to grab things out of his hands and examine unfinished projects by touch--without so much as a put-upon sigh. When all anyone else got was a dark glare a future of redirection from all porn sites, wholesale, to the you-need-jesus homepage of some rabid American megachurch stuck in the neon comic sans web aesthetic of the nineties. Obvious in the way Harry, if Amelia is to be believed, used to allow Mr. Pickles to stay with Merlin and no one else when Harry was away on missions. 

He wonders how much Harry had let on, or how much Merlin had guessed, about Harry and Eggsy. 

\-------------------

The worst fucking part was that it had taken Eggsy until just before Kentucky to notice. To even entertain the possibility that Harry put up with his bullshit out of anything other than duty to a good man Eggsy had never really known. 

Because why would anyone like Harry Hart look twice at anyone like Eggsy Unwin unless they were getting something out of it? 

Now that he's actually seen the movie, he has no idea if Harry had realized how apt the Pretty Woman comparison had been. Eggsy's done this song and dance before. The maths always end up the same, but it'd always been a matter of convenience and he'd never expected to find an Edward Lewis to whisk him away into happily ever after--credits role.

Not that knowing that had done him any good. 

Eggsy knew he'd been in trouble after the bar. Knew it'd been bad after the train test, when Harry had looked down on him with a smile and something in Eggsy had just turned over. Had been revving in his chest ever since, idling. 

So he'd flirted and kicked up mischief and once convinced at least half the employees at the tailor shop that he was Harry Hart's favored tart. Eggsy had counted it as a personal achievement when Mr. Gregson cornered and propositioned him in fitting room two, because if that hadn't been worth the look on Harry's face when he'd burst in seconds later, Eggsy doesn't know what would be.

The whole thing had gone from a laugh to a thing of brilliant wonder, because Harry had begun to play along. 

The game of the-rent-boy-and-the-spy had culminated in the comment about popping Eggsy's cherry in fitting room one, which had been so, so perfect--a secret side of Harry, eyes sparkling and dark, just for Eggsy. The look of disgusted jealousy on Gregson's beet-red, flabby face had just been icing on the cake. 

That had put what little remained of Eggsy's reserve to absolute shambles.

Because Eggsy's used to lean times dotted with intermittent feasts, he'd gone on to steal sips of Harry's very good twelve-thousand year old Islay Scotch out of Harry's hand-cut crystal glasses. Greedily hoarded two of Harry's exploding lighters, one of his Salvatore Ferragammo ties, three bags of chamomile tea--which Eggsy hates, and six of his pens like the world's most pathetic tween mouth breather klepto with a crush.These had been guarded like precious trinkets of favour, because he had known it could never last. 

And Harry had just put up with it--all of it--with mild, affectionate exasperation. Endlessly patient.

Then everything had gone to shit after they asked Eggsy to shoot JB. 

He'd driven back to London, furious for letting himself hope. He had been so stupid; how could he have believed that, duty done, Harry would do anything other than leave Eggsy like discarded rubbish by the highway?

To his mounting distress, Harry had hijacked the cab, steering him toward what Eggsy was certain would be a very thorough dismissal. Which at the very least would have given Eggsy an outlet for the impotent rage that had built like a summer storm as he stewed, helplessly trapped and intermittently nauseous, on the way over. 

Harry had taken him into the serial-killer bathroom for an introduction the pristinely maintained Mr. Pickles, which had done exactly nothing to ease the small voice of worry in Eggsy's head whispering that--hey, if he shot his dog, what's to stop him shooting you too?

And all Eggsy could think was, well fuck, Harry would just have to dig Eggsy up and kill him twice over, because the disappointment in Harry's voice was already killing him.

Except Harry had sighed with the same mild, affectionate exasperation.

And Harry had said: "We'll take care of this after I get back from Kentucky."

And Eggsy had felt his shoulders slump out of a tension he hadn't realized he'd been carrying.

"Eggsy," Harry had sounded so fucking fond. So concerned it hurt something in Eggsy's gut. 

It was too much. Eggsy could have handled anger or yelling or even violence. But this had been something else entirely. The unexpected kindness had utterly gutted him, cut out his tongue.

But Harry had seen, like he'd always seen right through Eggsy. The next thing he knew Harry had been right there. His hands a warm comfort on the back of Eggsy's neck, hot along the buttons of his spine.

"It's alright," He'd murmured and Eggsy had let himself lean into it until his forehead rested against Harry's shoulder. "It's alright, Eggsy." 

The breadth and length of Harry, the pure strength in him, had always been something of a comfort to Eggsy. Because here had been someone who, unlike Michelle or Daisy (or even, if planes were involved, Roxy) hadn't needed Eggsy's looking after. 

It had also made him a little nervous that, if what he was about to do went tits-up--if Eggsy had completely misjudged the situation--Harry could very easily beat him black and blue and bloody. Not that Harry would ever, in a thousand universes hurt him. But Eggsy's self-preservation skills had been honed by almost a decade of experience with Dean, and that shit--that little voice in the back of his mind--doesn't turn off. 

But of all the things Eggsy had ever wanted and could never have had, maybe he could have Harry. Steal him away with his rough thief's hands and, of all the things Eggsy had ever borrowed, pilfered, or otherwise liberated, guard him best of all. 

And this time, when Eggsy had done the maths, it had been worth the risk of losing everything. 

Harry had put up no resistance when Eggsy pushed his hands into his broad shoulders, so that Harry's back was up against the doorframe. And Eggsy finally, finally, finally screwed his courage to the sticking place and placed his bet. Had kissed Harry Hart.

It had been brief--more of a question than a kiss, really.

He had pulled back for a moment to gage Harry's reaction, fully prepared to bolt at the slightest provocation, only to make accidental eye contact with the glassy stare of Harry's dead, taxidermied dog.

This had been so momentarily disturbing--because, seriously Harry, what the fuck and jesus, what the fuck was Eggsy even doing-- that he is distracted enough for Harry to shove him back. Hard. Until the dining room table had dug into the backs of Eggsy's upper thighs and he'd been trapped, pinned as neatly as one of Harry's butterflies. 

Ever practical, Harry had paused to remove his glasses and tuck them neatly into his jacket pocket. And, cards on the table, Eggsy had waited for Harry to show his hand.

Then Harry had braced himself against the table on either side of Eggsy and looked at him searchingly, face so close to Eggsy's that he could see how blown Harry's pupils were against his dark irises. The thing in Eggsys chest, patiently idling for months, had shuddered to life. Eggsy could hardly be blamed, then, when he had twisted his right hand into Harry's posh, beautiful silk tie to pull him closer. 

And Harry had let himself be pulled in, until he'd been flush against Eggsy, kissing Eggsy. His mouth, along his jaw. His neck. Like he'd been hungry for it-- touch, starved and insistent. Just as brilliantly filthy as anything Eggsy had let himself imagine. 

Eggsy had heard himself make a small, needy noise that he tried to stifle. Like he hadn't been gagging for this for ages.

It would have been embarrassing had Harry not responded with a moan that went straight to Eggsy's cock. By reaching down for what Eggsy had first assumed was to grope Eggsy's ass, but had actually been to shove Eggsy up and back so that he was sitting precariously on the table, Harry slotted between his thighs. 

But then Harry had been far too far away again, so Eggsy had tried to pull him closer. Harry had caught up Eggsy's wrist in his hands with a frustrated sigh and Eggsy had experienced a sudden moment of terrible, sinking doubt.

" 'm sorry," Eggsy had mumbled, scrubbed his free hand over his face and made to get off the table. "I shouldn't have--"

"Stay," Harry had said, holding him in place. "Right here."

"Huh?" Eggsy had squinted, confused."Is this some weird, kinky--"

"No, Eggsy. Stay here, in my house. Wait for me," Harry had released Eggsy's wrist to wrap one hand around the nape of his neck. "I should have left for the airport ten minutes ago. I need to go soon. I'm sorry." 

But Eggsy hadn't really been paying attention, because Harry's other hand had begun to do the most brilliantly clever thing with Eggsy's trousers and pull down the fly. Eggsy had been torn between watching Harry's face--intoxicatingly intent-- and Harry's hand--seriously, brilliantly clever-- before he remembered that maybe Harry might like his hands to be doing something.

But Harry had just shaken his head: "We haven't the time. Hands stay on the table today, Eggsy."

"Good boy," Harry said with a small, pleased smile when Eggsy complied. 

Eggsy had taken a moment to give Harry a look--because, really Harry?

Except he had kind of liked it. And if that hadn't sent a rush of blood to Eggsy's already aching cock, the way Harry looked down on him as he said it would have done the trick. 

And Harry had just smiled wider before--bloody jesus fucking christ on a cross--taking Eggsy's hardening dick into his hand and giving it a gentle stroke, maddeningly slow.

"On the table, Eggsy," Harry had admonished when Eggsy's hand had rushed up of its own accord to cover his face. 

Eggsy groaned, returning his hand to grip the edge of the table before choking out: "Bloody hell, Harry. That's brilliant, but I thought we were buggered for time."

"Excellent point," Harry had held up his hand in front of Eggsy's face, cradling Eggsy's balls in the other with a gentle squeeze. "Lick. You'll want it nice and wet. Good. Just like that." 

Eggsy moaned as Harry returned his slicked up hand to his cock, setting a faster, firmer rhythm. And fuck, Eggsy had squirmed; not being able to touch Harry--to grab his hair or his arms or his jacket--had been torture.

"Wait for me, Eggsy, " Harry had run his free hand up Eggsy's side, sliding over his chest and his clavicle to the chain around Eggsy's neck, pulled out the Kingsmen medal and held it in his fist. "Promise you'll wait here for me while I'm away."

And Eggsy had nodded, probably would have agreed to do anything Harry had asked at that point, because with each stroke, Harry had begun to slide around his throbbing, sensitive cockhead with just the right pressure, just the right rhythm.

"Harry," Eggsy panted out, truncated. "God Harry, so good. 'm so close--"

"Promise, Eggsy," Harry said, slowing down until his encircled forefinger and thumb squeezed at the base of Eggsy's dick, holding him back. "Out loud."

Eggsy had let out a whine of frustration and thought of all the ways he was going to pay Harry back for this later, until he came absolutely undone in Eggsy's hands. 

"You mad bastard," Harry had him practically begging, throwing back his head and digging in his short nails so hard into the underbelly of the table they'd probably left permanent rents. "Yes, I fucking promise. Now please--I need--"

"Good," Harry had said, picking up the pace. "I've got you Eggsy. It's alright. I've got you--"

And Eggsy had cum, so sharp and sweet that it's at least a minute before he'd realized he'd disobeyed, because his hands were clutching at Harry's shoulders, at the very fine lapels of Harry's jacket. 

"We'll take care of this when I get back from Kentucky," Harry had promised with a soft kiss to Eggsy's lips, carding a hand through Eggsy's hair and letting the Kingman medal drop--the metal warm through Eggsy's shirt from Harry's hand.

\-----------------

Roxy wakes Eggsy a little after midnight to smuggle him the file. 

He wakes as he did in those first few days after Kentucky--heavy and sad without knowing why, like from a bad dream that leaves impressions without any tangible detail he can grasp before it fades-- before Eggsy remembers.

"Wassa Roxy?" He mumbles, pressing his pillow into his face.

"You need to see this."


	7. Show Me

Standing outside the door to Eggsy's room, Roxy doesn't notice Amelia's been calling her name until she touches Roxy's arm. She flinches.

"How is he?" She asks, turning Roxy so that Amelia can look at her face. "How are you? You look done in." 

Roxy removes her hand from where it had been clenched over her mouth to tuck it into her crossed arms, fidgety. "The doctors said the concussion was nothing serious--just needs monitoring to be sure. Otherwise...about as well as could be expected."

"Oh," Amelia says. "So, not very?"

"He read everything, but we didn't really talk. Said he just wanted to sleep," Roxy's expression speaks volumes about how much faith she put in that claim. "Thank you for getting the files." 

She holds out Merlin's borrowed tablet, but Amelia catches hold of Roxy's hands instead. Examining the new cuts from shrapnel, the bruises around her wrists where Harry held her down. 

"Oh, Roxy," Amelia sounds like she's the one that's been hurt, cupping Roxy's face with her free hand, tilting it gently to see the ugly, finger-shaped bruises blooming just below her jaw. "Oh, love."

"It's nothing. I'm fine," Roxy insists, uncomfortable with the attention. She wasn't concussed or shot; the bruises would yellow and fade, the shallow cuts would heal over without scars.

But Amelia, still cradling Roxy's hand in her own, says: "Come here."

She leads Roxy down the hall a ways to a small private room, pushes her to sit on the edge of the bed there and turns to rummage in the cabinets.

Roxy examines the room with blank disinterest, bone-tired and desiring nothing so much as keeling over into the mattress to sink into sleep, until Amelia sets a first aid kit on the small bedside stand.

"You don't have to," Roxy takes Amelia's wrist to stay her hand, feeling guilty that Amelia should spend her three am playing nursemaid. "Honestly I--"

"Let me."

Roxy nods and closes her eyes. 

Later, after Amelia tapes up Roxy and settles down beside her in the too-small bed to pull the covers over the both of them, Roxy speaks.

She doesn't know Amelia, not really. But if she doesn't give voice to her thoughts, she fears they will spiral in endless, restless circles inside her head until they drown her. Fears that if she talks to Eggsy like this, they'll flood the place from the sub basements up.

She's known Harry for years as a colleague of her uncles. Had stood by Eggsy and Percival when they'd lowered Harry's empty coffin into the ground at the Hart family plot. She doesn't know exactly what Harry had been to Eggsy, but knew the way he used to look at him--like Harry hung the moon and turned the tides. Knew how Eggsy had looked at the funeral, like the sparkling hinge around which he revolved had just rusted out. How he had squeezed her hand, much too tight, in his own calloused palm.

"He tried to use his tooth."

"His tooth?" Amelia sounds like she's on the edge of sleep, but curious.

"Harry," she explains, fumbling the words. "After Valentine shot him, the glasses slowed the bullet and he didn't die. Gazelle took him to Roman and he must have realized what-- what Roman was doing to him."

"All of the older agents have them." Percival, she knows, has one. "Little cyanide caps in one of the back molars."

Roxy rolls so that she and Amelia are bookended, faces inches apart in the total darkness. She can feel Amelias breath on her cheek.

"I've known Harry since I was a child. But what happened today, that wasn't Harry. I don't know if he's still in there," Roxy confesses. "What if he's too far gone to save?"

Amelia is silent for so long before she answers that Roxy think she must have dropped off.

"Then you don't let that thing wear Harry's face for one second longer. And you do what you have to to Roman."

"I have to bring him in," Roxy points out darkly.

"He's playing a dangerous game, Roman. With dangerous players. If a man strolls into the lion's den, no one is particularly surprised if he gets mauled."

"Amelia, I can't--"

"Just something to think about, love," Amelia reaches out to pull her close. "And I don't want you to think that I'm tired of talking to you, but we really should sleep. Merlin, in his infinite wisdom, has decided on an 8 am meeting."

Roxy groans and tucks her head under Amelia's chin with a half-hearted: "Scottish bastard."

"You haven't worked with him for five years," Amelia says. "My first month here, I made the mistake of royally cocking up one of his pet projects. It took me four months to get back into his good graces and three months after that to stop my computer re-routing me to this horrid, fundy religious website."

Roxy laughs a little into Amelia's collar bone. "Eggsy left me with the distinct impression that only happened when he tried to look up porn videos." 

"Yes. And food blogs. It was a rather trying time for me, love. Now go to sleep." 

Roxy does.


	8. Show Me (continued)

Hours after Roxy leaves, curled into his cot under the darkness of the medical wing, Eggsy can't help but wonder if this whole situation would have been easier if he had taken a fucking breather after Kentucky. If in the weeks after, he had actually tried at the mandatory psych eval sessions or acknowledged months ago that the insomnia which first found him under Harry's roof was more than just his body adjusting to the tossing memory foam. 

Probably.

But the instinct runs deep, cross wired to the most basic parts of him, because here he is: on a bed that's as terrible as any he's had the pleasure of stealing a few hours of shuteye on, but still miles from sleep, plagued by troubles he'd thought long buried and with one, singular thought.

Harry Hart is alive. 

He isn't surprised by the soft shuffle of approaching footsteps, as the staff have been checking in on him--Eggsy supposes for brain damage, though he's not sure how'd they tell in his case--every hour or so.

"Mum?" He says, surprised when he looks up to see Michelle sneaking with near-theatrical care down the corridor. 

She waves excitedly, whispering: "Eggsy, you're awake!"

"What are you doing? You should be in bed."

"I snuck out."

"Mum."

"Don't worry: the leg's good as new," Michelle demonstrates with a little spin. "Besides, I had to sneak out, didn't I? They weren't going to let me see you and no one's telling me nothing."

She perches on the visitor's chair by his bed and adds: "It's alright. I know you can't really talk about your work."

"As a ...tailor?" Eggsy tries.

"Sure. You got that goose egg on your head from an over-enthusiastic stitch, did you?" She reaches to turn his head so she can get a better look at it, letting out a little hiss of breath at the sight. "And the men who attacked us were just unsatisfied with the way you hemmed their trousers."

"I'm not a tailor mum," Eggsy sighs as he batts away her hand half-heartedly. 

"No shit," she laughs a little, patting his face. "I'm not daft. Now who's Harry Hart?" 

"What?'

"I heard you screaming after that funny bald bloke," Michelle's face tightens. "You sounded so upset. I tried to come find you but they wouldn't let me out of my room. What's happened?."

It's a convenient half-truth to retreat behind when he says: "I can't really talk about it."

"Because I'm a civilian?"

"That's part of it. The other part is I'm not exactly supposed to know about it either."

"Ah," She strokes the hair out of his face like she had, bleeding out in the car. "That's my lad. You definitely got that from my side of the family."

They talk about nothing in particular, carefully circumventing all the rough geography neither wants to navigate: Michelle's pills, Eggsy's secret double life, the man whose house they live in but hardly touch.

For Eggsy, it's a distraction as pleasant as it is strange. Like they've finally stepped out of the mountainous shadow cast by the death of Eggsy's father and struggled, clawing, out of the cesspool that was life under Dean. Only to find each other strangers coming out the other side of it all: awkward in their shared silences when Daisy's not there to buffer the conversation. 

He thinks about how young his mother looks, sitting there. How scared she must have been, carrying and bearing Eggsy as a teenager. About how she was his age when she lost her first husband and that no one would even tell her how he died, just that he had. Eggsy thinks he understands some of what she must have felt on that last one.

And he loves his mother to pieces, he really does, but no matter how Eggsy spins it, he can't understand why she had taken one look at Dean and thought: yes, he'll do rather nicely. Why she'd stayed after the first time Dean went nuclear, instead of of grabbing Eggsy and getting the hell out of dodge. And he certainly can't understand why she had decided--thought that it was somehow okay-- to look for bliss at the bottom of a pill bottle when that shit just kept happening, leaving Eggsy all alone on the other side of the rabbit hole. 

But Eggsy likes this new Michelle. She's louder and seems to take up more space now that the hunch in her shoulders is gone. She braids Daisy's hair in the morning and sings to her at night when Eggsy's not there to read his baby sister Jane Austin. Watches Harry's DVD's with Eggsy and demands things of him--that he tell her how his day is going, that he cook her breakfast in the morning and be home in time for supper at night.

And Eggsy's starting to hope that maybe, someday, he will be able to sit his mother down for a real, honest-to-god, conversation. To return to those dark places and find them a little easier to navigate, smoothed over by the erosion of time.

Just not today. He doesn't want to talk about anything today. 

"So you and Roxanne seem pretty close?" Michelle asks, after they've spent a good fifteen minutes talking the latest season of Top Gear to a point well-beyond death. "She's a pretty girl. And smart too."

"You two would make the cutest babies," she decides after a thoughtful pause. "I rather like the idea of grandkids."

He manages to somehow choke on his own spit, which kind of just re-affirms his original suspicion that the doctors will have a difficult time distinguishing brain damage from base-line Eggsy. Eggsy has never owed anyone even half of the what he owes Harry Hart, and Eggsy's more than grateful, but he still has no idea how the man got it into his head that he should turn Eggsy into a bloody gentleman superspy.

"I'm just saying," Michelle protests as she pours him a glass of water. 

He's changed his mind: this new Michelle is terrible. 

"Roxy's brilliant," He coughs out, which makes his head pulse something awful. "But I think she's got her eye on one of the I.T. birds. You know, Amelia?"

"Pitty," Michelle sighs, hastily adding: "Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. I just rather like the girl. You deserve someone nice like that, Eggsy."

Eggsy catches sight of his watch, laying on the bedside table: "Mum--"

"What? It's true."

"No, Mum. The doctor's coming to check on my head in less than two minutes, you need to go."

"Alright, alright," She pushes herself hastily to her feet. "Love you Eggsy."

"You too Mum."

Except, she comes back not a minute later, face drawn with lines of worry. 

"Someone's shut the bulkhead doors in the corridor," She says, gesturing behind her to the hallway. "I can't get back to my room. Is this supposed to be happening?"

"No," Eggsy reaches under his pillow for the gun he usually keeps there before remembering Merlin's taken it, and comes back empty handed--shit, this is bad. "No it's not."


	9. Show Me (continued)

Roxy is woken by Merlin's tiny, distant voice from her folded glasses on the nightstand. 

Momentarily disoriented enough to forget where she is and--more importantly-- that she is not alone, she accidentally whacks Amelia awake too, reaching for the bloody things.

"Sorrysorrysorry," She smooths a hand over Amelia's head at the point of contact. "--No. Not you Merlin. Now what--"

Merlins says something far too quick to for Roxy to catch as she swings her feet to the cold concrete floor. 

"Could you repeat that, please?" Roxy asks, switching on the speaker function for Amelia's benefit.

"Roman's men have infiltrated the bunker," Merlin reports, clipped, concise, and still a little too fast. "They've activated one of the old defense systems to lock down the bulkhead doors in the corridors and isolate us. They've also cut off all communication with the outside world. I'm working to override the systems, but in the meantime Arthur and I are cut off from Galahad and Michelle. Percival is trapped in the far end of the medical wing with the unwin child."

Amelia curses with fluid ease, fumbling for the light switch without shifting from her prone position. Roxy, who still has difficulty with even the most basic swearwords--the old guilt instilled through her mother's prim: 'a lady never swears, Roxanne' always makes her hesitate for just a second too long--is impressed.

"Ah Amelia," Merlin might be smiling a little--Roxy thinks she can hear it in his voice. "I was going to ask if the tracking readings I was getting were accurate, but I would recognize those dulcet tones anywhere. You're together. Good. It makes our plan of attack much easier."

Amelia mouths 'perv' to Roxy, well out of the line of sight of the glasses' small camera as Merlin continues: "You are right next to the elevator, correct?"

"Yes," Amelia says after a second of thought.

"And you have your laptop with you, Amelia?"

"Is the pope an old white man with a fabulous hat?" Amelia sounds offended that he would even have to ask. "Of course I do."

"Excellent. I'm going to send you the building schematics. I need you to guide Roxy through the elevator shaft to the maintenance floor, which should give you free access to the isolated sections while I handle our agents trapped in the medical wing. Got it?"

Amelia reaches over Roxy to flip open her laptop, resting her arm across the top of Roxy's thigh, unselfconscious as she types something on the keyboard, fingers flying: "Aaand, yes. Got it."

"Merlin?" Roxy asks, troubled by a sudden realization.

"What is it Lancelot?"

She hesitates: "...Is Harry with them?"

"Yes. But Roman is not," Merlin says. "There's fifteen men, sweeping the base in groups of three. I need you to take out as many as you can, and distract the rest from reaching our injured in medical, or from IT while I work to override the system."

"Copy that."

Merlin signs off, to work the kind of hollywood hacker magic that he swears-- up and down and all kinds of put-upon-- is impossible. But Roxy's not worried: they don't call the man a wizard for nothing, after all.

Amelia, to Roxy's surprise, plucks the glasses from Roxy's grasp just as she is about to settle them on her face, pressing the small button just under the left lense to place them in communication black-out.

"Amelia, what--"

Amelia worries her lip, looking uncertain before she finally says: "I know we're short on time, but this is important. Can I trust you Roxy? Can I trust you absolutely--to never share what I'm about to tell you with anyone?"

And she seems so uncharacteristically at a loss, looking up at Roxy from where she's stretched out-- half in the bed and half in Roxy's lap, that Roxy reaches out to stroke a hand down her cheek: "What is it?"

"What would you say," Amelia asks carefully, placing her hand over Roxy's and leaning into the touch, "if I told you MI6 might have a way of saving Harry, if he's still in there?"

And that is so unexpected Roxy's not quite sure what to say, looking down at Amelia's earnest face with surprise. How could Amelia possibly know something like that? 

"I would ask you how you got that information," She says, with just as much care. "Merlin doesn't have that intel, which means the Kingsmen don't have that intel." 

Roxy pauses, waiting for Amelia to fill in the silence.

"I can't tell you if you ask, so please don't," Amelia closes her eyes. "For both of our sakes. I don't want to lie to you, Roxy, but it's better if you don't know. They'll burn me if they find out. Leave me dangling like hooked bait in some backwater shithole for the worst sorts of people to find."

She has no idea what is worrying at Amelia, because Merlin would never reprimand her for something that might bring Harry back to them. But to Amelia at least, the threat seems to be very real. 

Roxy thinks of Amelia, with her perfect clothes and her beautifully impractical heels. Of the fussy way she had picked out all of the green onions from her egg-drop soup when they had ordered Chinese food. How she loves Sherlock and Star Trek along with most other TV shows, and how she seems to be more addicted to playing Candy Crush on her phone than even Roxy.

She thinks of all the compromises Amelia will need to make for a chance at survival if she is given a burn notice.

"Just," Amelia says haltingly, "I can't stand by and do nothing if Harry's still in there and I can help save him. I can't."

"Then I won't ask," Roxy says, using her other hand to smooth Amelia's sleep-rumpled hair from her face and promises: "I won't ask. You can trust me. Tell me, please."

"Alright," Amelia says, giving Roxy a long, considering look.

"Alright," She decides, reaching to the side table and grabbing the first thing she can find to write on--a paper towel. 

She scribbles something down in a looping cursive hand, using Roxy's leg as a desk as she says: "Your first stop will be the armory. You'll need an umbrella and everything I've listed here. It should be a fairly straightforward modification if you follow these instructions."

She rolls, still lying on the bed, to give the paper to Roxy. But when Roxy catches sight of her face--grim and blanched pale, her mouth a tight, determined line-- she looks like she's been sentenced to death at the stake. Roxy knows they have no time, but she just has to do something--she can't bear to leave Amelia like this. 

She shifts off the cott, kneeling on the ground so that she can cup Amelia's face in her hands at eye level.

"Amelia, it's ok. I don't know what you did to get this intel, but Merlin would never burn you for something like this."

Amelia's face twists into a cryptic, dark little smile that Roxy can't decipher. 

"Everything is going to be fine," She insists, brushing her thumbs along Amelia's cheekbones.

Before Roxy can quite process what is happening, Amelia leans forward, closing the gap between them with a kiss that wrenches something out of Roxy's chest by degrees.

Because, although her lips are soft and warm on Roxy's own, it's a raw thing--rough with sloppiness and nothing close to what she thought it would be like with Amelia-- but absolutely sweet. As if Amelia's afraid they'll never get another chance. Like these few stolen moments--and Roxy knows they can't spare much more than that--are all they'll ever have.

Roxy lets out a small squeak of surprise and, misinterpreting, Amelia pulls back too quickly, blurting out: "I'm sorry. I thought-- I wanted to before--"

And that just won't do. Simply cannot be tolerated. So Roxy cuts her off by closing the broken circuit between them and pressing her lips to Amelia's. 

As soon as she has, Amelia tangles a hand in Roxy's hair, like it's her only anchor. Kisses into Roxy's mouth with a desperate kind of fervor that Roxy's never known the likes of. God, Roxy thinks, if only they had time.

She makes a noise that Roxy absolutely must hear again, so she chases after it, along Amelia's jaw and down her neck.

"It's alright Amelia," Roxy mouths into the pulsepoint just above her collarbone. "It's alright."

"You have to go," Too soon, Amelia pulls back.

Roxy sighs and drops her forehead to the mattress between Amelia's elbows. 

"I have to go," Roxy agrees after a beat, looking around for her glasses before Amelia finally produces them, switching them back on to settle them on Roxy's face.

"Perfect," Amelia says, making one final adjustment and letting her hands linger for just a second too long, warm over Roxy's ears. "They really suit you quite well, Lancelot.

"Well, someone I know happens to have excellent taste."

"You're damn right," Amelia agrees, looking Roxy over with a grin. "I'll be with you all the way. Now go kick some righteous ass, love."

\-----------

Roxy does.

\------------


	10. Ascot Gavot

"Do you hear that?" Michelle asks, placing a hand on Eggsy’s forearm and cocking her head toward the room’s air vent.

Unable to contact Merlin without Eggsy’s glasses or to escape the small slice of the medical wing to which they have been confined, the two have been sitting on Eggsy’s hospital bed, discussing possible explanations for the quarantine. 

Eggsy had first noticed the clangs issuing from behind the worryingly spacious air vent several minutes earlier but--not wanting to alarm his already-anxious mother and hoping that the noises were nothing more than the bunker showing its age-- Eggsy hadn’t brought it to Michelle’s attention. 

But the noises had grown louder with each of the increasingly far-fetched theories Michelle and Eggsy concocted to pass the time. As they had moved from aliens to alternate dimensions--Michelle had apparently been watching a lot of Black Mirror while stuck in her own room--Eggsy’s stomach had sunk.

Someone is very intent on reaching them.

"Yes," Eggsy says, grimly aware of how defenseless they are. 

He doesn't have a weapon and it still feels like his head's screwed on wrong--every time he tries to stand, he gets dizzy and moving is like trying to swim through treacle.

"Don't you move," Michelle pushes Eggsy back when he tries to get up, "You're concussed."

"I doubt whoever is coming through that air vent will care whether I'm a concussed chav or the duchess of Cambridge, mum," he argues, pushing himself to his feet against a wave of vertigo. "Get back from the vent."

But his movements are still unbalanced and slow. Too slow.

The clanging gets louder, until there is a small popping noise. The grate clatters to the floor and a head emerges.

Eggsy doesn't get a good look at the intruder because, with a shriek that seems much to large to have been produced by her small body, Michelle grabs the closest object at hand--which happens to be a large, shiny bedpan--and whacks the intruder across the face. 

\--------

Roxy pries open the elevator doors and surveys the dark and echoing shaft. 

With the bunker in lockdown, the cab is stuck two floors below. Roxy will have to claw her way up the narrow service ladder. 

Pushing back her healthy respect for heights-- a perfectly natural response when the fall could bloody well kill her, Eggsy--Roxy white-knuckles the rusted rungs of the ladder until she reaches the narrow crawl space of the maintenance floor. 

"How's it looking, Lancelot?" Amelia asks as Roxy lies flat in her stomach, taking a second to gather herself back on solid, albeit filthy, ground.

"Dusty," Roxy sneezes twice. "But clear. Lead the way"

Amelia guides her through the dark, cramped space. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust that, in addition to the absolute darkness of the floor, makes the eerie, mechanical shapes of the bunker’s guts difficult for Roxy to identify. 

She picks her way carefully around what could either be part of the ventilation system or a medieval torture device using only the dim glow of her watch to light her way. She has to shuffle along in a crouch so that she doesn't knock herself out on one of the random protuberances on the low ceiling.

"Hold your position Roxy," Amelia says. "You're over the armory--the trapdoor should be right under your feet--but one of the teams of hostiles is in the corridor. I'll get you a visual." 

"I only have my handgun," Roxy reminds her as a wireframe feed of the floor below, complete with three stalking figures, overlays itself on the lenses of her glasses. "But they're spread out..." 

Roxy peers at the man directly beneath her position. The other two are far down the hallway, around a tight bend that will put her well out of their line of sight.

"What do you need?"

"If you give me some kind of distraction for the two down the hallway," Roxy grasps the handle to the trapdoor, "I can do this."

"Of course. Hang on...." Amelia pauses for a beat. "On my count. One, two--"

On three, several things happen. 

Roxy flings open the trapdoor to drop on to the man below. He struggles, surprised, against her forearm squeezed like a vice around his neck and the lock she folds his arm into before it can reach for his gun. 

And Amelia comes through.

The struggle is drowned out by the sudden, earsplitting three-part harmony of the 1977 disco hit 'Staying Alive'. The man's teammates are aware of nothing except Barry Gibb warbling his ah-ha-ha-ha's in deafening falsetto through the speakers at the far end of the hall. 

It's an effective distraction, that much Roxy can say.

Only after she's put the first man on the floor and dispatched the, understandably baffled, remaining pair does the music cut.

"The Bee Gees, Amelia?" Roxy asks, standing in the middle of the corridor with her enemies laid out at her feet. "Really?"

"The armory, Lancelot. We can discuss my impeccable taste in music later."

\-----------

Even when not directly handling agents, Merlin likes to keep tabs on his people--especially his two newest Kingsmen--in the field. 

He has Lancelot’s video feed playing on one of the control room monitors where he can watch it out of the corner of his eye while shifting through the network of cameras and biosensors scattered throughout the bunker. 

Merlin’s attention is worn thin between tracking the progress of Roman’s men, monitoring Roxy’s activities, and fruitlessly trying to rouse Percival or Galahad on their comms.

Which is why Merlin doesn't catch the focused intent with which Arthur watches Lancelot’s video feed. Or notice the way Arthur frowns as she watches Lancelot consult a small scrap of paper before picking and choosing which weapons to arm herself with.

\----------- 

Weighed down with an arsenal that is equal parts genius and fiendishly demented-- but all Kingsman-- Roxy eventually manages to clamber back into the maintenance floor after enlisting the help of two tables, a chair, and the umbrella.

But it is worth it when she has the luxury of deciding whether she'd prefer to use the tried-and-true grenade lighter or test out the knockout gas Merlin made for her-- secreted away in a gorgeous crystal perfume bottle--that she'd not yet had the opportunity to try.

What the hell, she decides, dropping the delicate glass bottle down the hatch on to the next trio off intruders unfortunate enough to cross her path.

After all, how many times in a single lifetime could one expect to be granted the possibility of taking out insurgents with a bottle of Channel?

\----------

By the time Roxy's reached the next trio--dangerously close to the medical wing according to the map displayed on the screen of Roxy's glasses-- they seem to be expecting her.

In tight formation, they duck the blast of the lighter grenade, returning fire and forcing Roxy to seek cover behind the nearest turn of the hallway.

"Hold on," Amelia says as Roxy ruffles around in her pocket. 'No, this is too good to be true."

"Feel like sharing, Amelia?" Roxy grits out, producing a small compact mirror and using it to peer around the corner at her attackers. "Actually, hold on a second."

With the press of a button, the little mirror emits a blinding flash of light and a percussive, deafening bang with exquisite precision and directionality that dazes her targets but leaves Roxy unaffected. 

"They're standing almost directly over one of this place's old traps," Amelia sounds delighted at the prospect as Roxy watches the three men stagger, disoriented. "If you can just get them to move toward you about a meter, I can activate it."

"Oi!" Roxy cups her hands around her mouth and shouts. "You lot!"

"I actually didn't think that would work," Roxy admits to Amelia as the group shuffles forward blindly.

"Here we go."

And like that, the three men are gone, as the entire floor--wall-to-wall for a length of about three meters-- drops away.

"A trapdoor?" Roxy asks, rather redundantly as she creeps to the edge to stare into the abysmal darkness below.

"Old fashioned, I know," Amelia says blithely. "But it's a classic for a reason."

"What's waiting for them down there?" Roxy listens as the startled screams become fainter and fainter

"Today, just bruises and broken bones I expect," Amelia says, "and maybe one or two komodo dragon skeletons." 

\------------

The fourth team is practically at Merlin's doorstep. Enmeshed in the fragile wires and delicate humming of the chilly server room close to where Merlin is trapped, Roxy doesn't want to risk the irreparable harm a stray bullet to the the electronic equipment may bring.

Instead--tucked behind her umbrella-- she leads them away, hustling backward up a tortuously long and twisting staircase, ducking the bullets they manage to spray out between tripping up the stairs after her. 

Then there's a door at her back. Locked. 

Dammit.

"Amelia, if you wouldn't mind?"

"Of course, love." 

There is a loud mechanical thunk.

Roxy fumbles for the handle and is entirely disoriented when she falls backward--apparently from a supply closet--into the filthiest men's bathroom she's ever seen.

And this must be some sort of secret entrance--she can’t still be in the bunker. Because this room smells like urine and skunky beer. She can hear the pounding baseline of club music and the noise of a crowd through the thin walls. 

And she is not alone.

The room's other occupant, pissing meditatively into the sink, looks over at her ambivalently and, with a shrug, turns back to finish his business before leaving without a backward glance. Like a bespectacled young woman in a suit, wielding an umbrella like a shield as she emerges from the Narnia next to the urinal is not even the weirdest thing he's seen all night.

She realizes why that might be the case as she bursts out of the bathroom, neatly ducks an affronted looking woman who shrieks at Roxy--'you can't be in there'--and somehow hooks a wrong turn to find herself centerstage on a darkly slick runway, blinded by the lights and deafened by the rhythmic, squirming thump of the subwoofers.

She blinks owlishly into the spotlight, stained pink by the translucent gel over the bulb, and ignores the wolf whistles and drunken catcalls from the crowd:

"First time, darling?"

"Show us yer tits!"

"Amelia, help," She whispers, panicking. "I think I'm in a strip club."

Roxy just has time to be disappointed by the static that answers her before her pursuers rush the stage.

\------------------

“Roxy?” Amelia calls into her headset as her video feed cuts out. “Roxy, can you hear me?”

The only answer Amelia gets is a tidal rush of white noise. 

Merlin seems to have regained control of the bulkhead doors in the hallways, but must still be wrestling their external communications network into compliance after the hostile takeover of the system.

She is about to radio Merlin to confirm when she hears the door to her room creak open.

Amelia’s initial panic--that she will somehow have to wrangle three years of poor performance in self-defense classes into actual self-defense against Roman’s team--sinks into something much, much worse when she turns to see the figure framed in the light her doorway.

“Amelia,” Arthur says, and though her tone and expression remain level, Amelia goes cold. Because Arthur knows.

“Now, what have we been up to?”

\-----------------

With the trio close on her heels, Roxy does the only thing she can think of--launching herself down the runway to the end of the stage. The two men and one women give chase, closing the distance rapidly.

Instead of slowing down at the end of the catwalk, Roxy accelerates, grabbing the pole stationed at the end of the walkway with both hands. To the crowd's delight, she whips around it at speed, delivering a two-legged kick into the chest of the pack leader, who stumbles back into the others with a satisfying crash.

With the three goons incapacitated and black-shirted bouncers rapidly closing in, Roxy scoops up the fallen umbrella and leaps off stage, sprinting for the door. 

She only has to deal with one security guard, who she whacks across the nose with the umbrella and a hasty 'sorry!', before she's free, through the double doors of the club and into the parking lot Looking back over her shoulder she sees at least five bouncers, with the builds of rugby players, converge on her assailants.

Good. 

She pauses for a quick breather under the buzzing glow of the Pink Pussycat’s massive neon sign and takes great gulps of the gloriously fresh air--a revelatory experience after the close and unpleasantly moist atmosphere in the club. God, Roxy mentally shudders. 

Because, stripper pole. 

She is going to need to wash her hands for such a long time after this. For at least an hour but quite possibly the remainder of her life.

Roxy gathers her thoughts--as far as she knows, the car lift in the parking lot can only be activated from inside the bunker. But that still leaves one option.

Roxy circles the block twice before she spots it.

Jogging over, she jams herself and the umbrella inside the decrepit old rotary telephone booth, slamming the folding door shut behind her. She tucks the headset into her shoulder as she dials, hoping against hope that Merlin or Amelia has got the elevator activated again.

Or, come to think of it, that this is even a lift to begin with and Amelia hadn't been fucking with her.

Her fingers fumble on the last digit and she has to start all over again.

0

0

7

Not entirely sure what to expect, she is surprised when the phone rings twice before a familiar voice says: "Bond and Bourne Tailors. We're a little overwhelmed at the moment, please hold."

"Merlin!" She clutches the headset to her ear. "Merlin--don't put me on hold. I got stuck outside. Let me down, please."

And--goddamn, Amelia--the thing is a lift after all. Roxy hooks the phone into its cradle and folds in relief against the grimy wall of the booth as the windows darken and the lift shudders downward.

Her headset snaps back from the dead, though this time it is Merlin's voice in her ear rather than Amelia's.

"Lancelot," He says. "Excellent work, agent."

"Is everyone down there okay?" Roxy asks. "The final team--"

"I've regained control of most of our systems and trapped two of the remaining intruders in a small storage room in the sub basement," Merlin reports. "We have one still unaccounted for."

"Harry?" She hazards.

"Correct. I want you to go to the medical wing to check in. I sent Percival through the vent to rendezvous with Michelle and Eggsy, but I haven't been able to reach him on his comm for quite some time."

\------------

“You’re covered in glitter luv,” is the first thing Michelle says to Roxy--holding her at arms length and checking her up and down for signs of injury as JB sniffs with great interest at Roxy’s trousers.

"It's a long story," Roxy sighs. "I can't stay, I'm just checking in. Eggsy--how's your head?"

"s'alright," Eggsy calls from the hospital bed. "Probably better than Edwin's over here."

Roxy is confused for just a moment before a hand emerges from behind the curtain that divides the room. It is drawn back to reveal a very haggard, very bruised looking Percival seated in the visitor's chair. His injured leg is elevated on the room's second cot, where a sleeping Daisy is curled under the blankets.

"I suppose it would be best for my health," Percival says, "if I just stopped trying to help you lot."

"What happened?" Roxy is halfway across the room to examining the wicked-looking gash across the bridge of Percival's nose before she remembers where her hands have been. 

"Ms. Unwin," Percival says simply as Roxy triple washes her hands in near-scalding water and still manages to feel--to borrow one of Eggsy's choicier phrases--minging.

"I was bringing the girl over to her mother and took her rather by surprise," Percival explains as Roxy turns from the sink to examine his swollen face.

"It was a one-in-a-million shot," Percival holds up his mangled, useless glasses. "I'm more impressed than anything. I once had a pair of these swallowed by a saltwater crocodile and--Merlin tells me--the damn things came out the other side in perfect working order."

He turns to Michelle: "You hit them just right, ma'am."

"I'm relieved to see everyone is well," Merlin speaks in her com. "Roxy, I'd like you to go provide backup to Arthur and Amelia. Arthur isn’t answering her comm. It looks like Harry is closing in on their location."

"I've got to go check up on Amelia and Arthur," Roxy says to Eggsy, Percival, and Michelle. “But I need you three to do something for me."

As Percival wrangles himself to a stand with the help of a crutch, Roxy pulls the paper towel with Amelia's scribbled instructions and half a dozen other gadgets out of various pockets to dump the lot on the foot of Eggsy's bed.

Percival snatches up the paper towel and squints at it: "We're building an EMP?"

“An E-M-what?” Eggsy asks.

Percival ignores Eggsy in favor of squinting at the paper towel some more before adding: “A bloody powerful EMP at that. Care to enlighten us as to why?”

Roxy fishes the flash-bang compact mirror from her trouser pocket and adds it to the pile. "Amelia says this will disable whatever modifications Roman's done to Harry."

Percival nods, but Eggsy still looks as though he hasn't quite grasped what’s going on, so Roxy folds the umbrella into his slack hands and catches his eye before she says: "There's a chance we can save him, Eggsy. If Harry’s still in there, we can get him back."


	11. Ascot Gavot (II)

Following Amelia’s instructions to construct the device proves frustratingly difficult, and Eggsy can’t shake the thought that each minute they waste argueing is another minute Roxy has to face Harry alone. 

“That’s not where that goes, Mum,” Eggsy insists, after spending a good five minutes trying to slot the compact mirror into place.

“Yes it is, luv,” Michelle snatches the umbrella out of Eggsy’s hands to twist open the handle, exposing the electronic guts within.

Eggsy and Percival exchange a look . Percival shrugs as Michell finally clicks the compact mirror into place with a violent, wrenching motion.

“There,” looking pleased, Michelle tosses the umbrella at the foot of Eggsy’s bed.

Percival squints down at the paper towel in his hands and back at the umbrella.

“Is that right?” Eggsy asks.

“Yes,” Percival says, cocking his head to the side to examine their handiwork. “Yes, I think so.”

“See,” Michelle punches Eggsy in the shoulder, which actually kind of hurts. “Told you. Just needed the softness of a woman’s touch.”

“And now for the hard part,” Percival says, as though the past fifteen minutes spent piecing the device together hadn’t been agonizing, “getting it to Roxy.”

He grimaces as he shifts his weight to his injured leg, making to get up. 

“You’re not getting far on that ankle,” Michelle reaches for the umbrella, but Eggsy gets there first.

“And you’re not going out there either, mum.”

“You think you are?” She asks, propping her hands on her hips with a scowl. “You were knocked unconscious not twentyfour hours ago. This isn’t an action movie, luv. You can’t just shrug something like that off-- not when you can hardly stand without looking like you’re about to chuck up everything you’ve eaten in the past week.”

“You’re not going out there,” Eggsy insists, doing his best to keep the nauseous look off his face as he stands, lest he prove her point. “and Percival can’t, so that leaves me.”

“Gary Unwin--” Michelle starts, crossing her arms.

“Ms Unwin,” Percival interrupts her. “Michelle. Eggsy is a highly trained professional. However adept you may be at wielding bedpans, you are a civilian. I cannot allow you to go--”

“Allow me--” Michelle turns her frown to Percival, puffing up like a bird. “Allow me? I’d like to see you try to stop me, you--”

“Mum,” Eggsy catches her shoulder. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Your son is one of our best,” Percival says,” and he will have Lancelo--he will have Roxy out there to back him up.”

Michelle frowns at Eggsy, looking him over thoughtfully.

“Tailor my left arse cheek,” She sighs, crossing her arms. “Knights of the round table and zombie bloody cyber men. This is absolutely mad.”

“I’ll be fine, mum. Promise”

“Take care, luv.”

Eggsy pulls her into an awkward, one-armed hug, kissing the top of her head, “Always.”

\-------

Finding Roxy turns out to be the least of his problems. 

She must be having a knock-down-drag-out with Harry, given the racket the two are making. Eggsy has no doubts in his ability to follow the echoing thuds and guttural clamor to their source, only his ability to not vomit, fold to the floor, or both on the way there. 

He has to pause for breath halfway up the stairs. Tucks his head down to his chest and braces his hand against the wall as the world seems to spin around him. 

Then he hears Roxy scream.

Eggsy has no idea how, but one second he’s gripping the guardrail for dear life and the next he’s flying up the stairs, heart pounding in his ears.

He bursts through the door, which gives a loud creaking groan of protest, stumbling from the stairwell into a dimly lit corridor. 

The hallway is distressingly silent. 

"Roxy?" He calls out into the darkness, but no reply comes.

Unsure which way the sound came from, Eggsy is peering into the gloom to his left when a sudden movement catches his attention in the corridor extending to his right. 

Turning, Eggsy sees a dark shape barreling down the hallway toward him. 

Eggsy has just enough time to hope the bloody thing works before he levels the modified umbrella at the approaching figure, adjusts the setting, and fires.

The umbrella makes a loud buzzing sound. Eggsy can feel the hair on the back of his neck and along his forearms rise. The air feels charged, with a building tension that reminds Eggsy of the electric hum that trails the towering, dark thunderheads of summer storms like a wake. 

There is a loud cracking noise, a flash of light. The buzzing ceases. 

Eggsy can’t see what’s going on from behind the extended umbrella, so he peeks over the top. 

Harry stands stock-still, not three meters from Eggsy.

Neither moves for several tense seconds. 

Then Harry lifts his arm, which has Eggsy’s finger reaching for the trigger again, wondering if the faintly smoking umbrella can manage another shot. But instead of reaching for a weapon, Harry pulls off his tactical helmet. 

And Eggsy doesn’t want to put too much stock in hope, but he’s pretty sure it’s Harry who peers back out at him this time.

Eggsy would recognize that look anywhere, he thinks. Even if he walks the world twice over and lives to be a hundred. Even if all the well-loved faces ever mapped to his memory dim and fade, this one will burn bright still.

Because no one has ever looked at Eggsy quite like Harry Hart. 

Eggsy becomes aware that his knees seem much more bendy than they have any real right to be. He has to brace a hand to the wall against their sudden and mutinous desire to act like nothing so much as a pair of wobbling jello molds. 

“Eggsy, what--” Harry reaches out a hand to steady him, concern and confusion knitting his brow.

Eggsy wants nothing more than to wrap Harry in his arms and tell him everything is fine; will be fine. That they can finally talk about all the things they’d meant to after Kentucky. 

But Eggsy is having a difficult time saying anything at all. Or moving. So he just repeats Harry’s name over and over like the banged-up wreck he is.

This only serves to make Harry’s expression more deeply distressed, one hand tightening around Eggsy’s arm and the other cupping the back of Eggsy’s neck. Taking in Eggsy’s bruised face.

“I did this,” Harry brushes his thumb gingerly along the bottom edge of Eggsy’s blackened eye, sounding absolutely gutted. “God, Eggsy I--”

Which is when an alarmingly-bloodied Roxy bursts out of fucking nowhere and tackles Harry to the ground. 

Harry makes the least dignified noise Eggsy has ever heard come out of his mouth-- somewhere between yelp and squawk--and takes Eggsy down with him as he falls forward. 

Since meeting Harry Hart, Eggsy has strived to never half-ass anything. It is only fitting, then, that his body seems intent on not half-assing this mess of a disaster either: Eggsy sends whatever remained of the moment plummeting down in spectacular flames as he vomits all over Roxy’s shoes.

\-------------

The next days float by Eggsy in an addled blur. 

He splits the time not spent lying, restless, in his own hospital cot at Harry’s and Roxy’s bedsides. By achingly slow degrees, Eggsy’s brain emerges from the befuddled fog of his concussion as Roxy recovers from her injuries and Merlin runs Harry through every battery of tests the Kingsmen can conjure up. 

To all appearances, Roman’s device has been irrevocably damaged by Amelia’s umbrella.

“Merlin tells me there’s no way to remove the damn thing,” Harry tells Eggsy darkly. “But everyone assures me my days at Roman’s beck and call are well behind me.”

Harry has long given up insisting that Eggsy return to his own hospital room to rest and recover whenever Eggsy sneaks in to visit. Simply stretches one of his hands for Eggsy to slot his own into, like he is as desperate for the contact as Eggsy is. 

Soon, Eggsy knows, the doctors will discover his absence and come to shepherd him back to his room.

But, looking down at his hand in Harry’s, Eggsy thinks that it doesn’t really matter. However short, these stolen moments are all he needs to see him right.


	12. Get Me to the Church on TIme

Eggsy half-expected Michelle to fall for Harry’s not inconsiderable charm when the two meet.

Awoken from a dreamless sleep one night in Harry’s room, it becomes painfully apparent to him that this will not be the case.

“So, you’re Harry Hart” Michelle says, frowning over the scene--Eggsy half in Harry’s hospital bed and half in the visitor’s chair--from the doorway. 

“Ms. Unwin--,” Harry starts, flashing his best sunshine-smile--the one that makes his eyes crinkle.

“I remember you. You’re the one who told me my Lee was dead,” She cuts him off, her hard expression an unmoving mask, before turning her attention to Eggsy.

“I went to your room but you weren’t there,” Michelle tells him. “The doctors told me you like to sneak in here.”

She looks over their hands, still linked together: “Little old for you, ‘int he?”

Eggsy is horrified. He hadn’t ever expected to introduce his mother to Harry, but he can think of at least ten thousand ways this could be going better.

“He’s nice mum,” He says simply after a beet, hoping she understands given their conversation earlier in Eggsy’s room. 

To his relief, she nods at him before pulling up the other visitors chair and positioning herself on the other side of Harry.

“That’s my son you’ve got there,” Michelle stares at Harry with a worrying intensity. 

“God mum,” Eggsy drops his face into his hands, mortified. “No.”

“That’s my boy,” She continues, unfazed. ”If anything happens to him--if you hurt him-- I will bury you so deep that none of your lot will ever find the body.”

“Duly noted,” Harry says with all apparent seriousness. Eggsy can’t be sure, but he’s pretty sure Harry is fighting back one of his fond smiles, normally reserved for Eggsy. 

“Now,” Michelle hunches down, propping her elbows on her knees to gaze at Harry intently. “The important stuff--let’s start with football. Who do you support?”

\----------

For Roxy, the days of her recovery are less pleasant.

Merlin’s expression goes stormy the first time she asks after Amelia when she wakes up, and Roxy’s heart sinks. 

“Amelia was a double agent working for MI-6,” Merlin explains to her, bitter. “She was installed in the Kingmen as a sort of safety measure, shortly after Percival came to them with his concerns.”

“But she seemed so scared of Arthur when she told me how to disable Harry’s implant--why?” Roxy asks. 

“Arthur wanted to study Roman’s inventions in working detail, which Amelia’s actions prevented,” Merlin says distastefully. “After everything he’s done for England, she wanted to treat Harry like a lab rat. With the intent, I think, of making more like him. I can’t say I’m sorry she’s gone.”

“Where are they now?”

“I’m still searching.”

“But I’ll bet I can hazard a guess where Arthur’s next stop will be--Roman?” Roxy says.

“Roman,” Merlin nods.

“We need to get there first,” Roxy says, clenching her hands into fists against the blankets of the hospital bed. “We can’t let Roman do that to anyone else. I want the mission.”

“Roxy--”

“The doctors tell me I’m almost healed already,” She insists preemptively.

“Rox--”

“And I know I don’t have that many missions under my belt, but--”

“Roxy, stop,” Merlin holds up a hand, but he’s smiling--she’s always been his favorite. “I’ve already assigned it to you and Percival, but the mission is yours.” 

\-------

A few days later, Roman finally pings Merlin’s radar--near the Siberian base where Roxy first learned about the Excalibur project. 

On her way to the jet, she is surprised when Harry intercepts her. 

“Lancelot,” He says, rising from his seat in the shadows.

God, he’s good at that, Roxy thinks, proud when she doesn’t so much as jump at the man’s sudden appearance.

“Harry,” She says. “Good to see you up and about.”

And significantly less intent on killing her, but it’s not like Roxy’s going to say a thing like that aloud. 

“I must apologize for my behavior earlier,” Harry says, rebuttoning his suit jacket. “I was not myself.”

“You’re back now,” Roxy says--and it’s not a question. 

She’d pried the information out of Harry’s files several nights ago--with Eggsy sneaking off to Harry’s room at all hours, she had needed to be sure.

Privately, Roxy feels terrible for the staff: having to shepherd the recovery of three restless spies at once would be taxing for anyone. Especially when one won’t stay in his hospital bed, one violates doctor-patient confidentiality to satisfy her own curiosity, and the third charmed the nurses so thoroughly that they’re practically eating out of his hand-- Roxy’s pretty sure Harry’s been invited to two weddings, a baby shower, and asked to be someone’s godfather already.

“From what I understand, I owe you a significant debt for your part in that,” Harry says. “Thank you, Roxy.” 

“Of course,” Roxy says. 

“But I didn’t come here just to offer my gratitude,” Harry says. “Arthur has issued a burn notice on Amelia.”

Roxy goes cold. 

“Thank you for telling me,” Roxy says, automatically defaulting to politeness. 

If Amelia had been burned, Roxy thinks, there was no way the Kingsmen would take her back, was there? Not when she’d been working for years as a MI-6 mole, right under Merlin’s nose.

But she can’t deal with this now, not in front of a senior agent and not with a mission to complete. 

She makes to move past Harry, wondering what shithole Arthur dumped Amelia in and if she can track Amelia down on her own, when Harry stops her with a hand on the arm.

“Do you know why we chose you as the next Lancelot, Roxy?” He asks.

Roxy can scrape up at least half a dozen reasons. 

Because her best friend was was too sweet to shoot a dog. Because her uncle is Percival. Because the Kingsmen finally decided it was time for a little hiring diversity. 

None seems worth giving voice to, so Roxy just shakes her head.

“Let me preface this by asking: do you know the old myth for which Lancelot--the knight of the round table, not the Kingsman--is best known?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Roxy demands, impatient and wanting nothing more than the privacy of a few hours on the Kingsman jet to mull things over. 

“Everything,” Harry insists. “Do you know the story?”

“No,” She doesn’t quite snap.

“Our ideas of romantic love are strongly influenced by the idealized concept of courtly love,” Harry begins. 

Roxy’s brow furrows in utter confusion as he continues: “Today, love is generally viewed as a sweet experience, ‘gentle and kind’. But love in those times was seen almost as a sickness--a helpless descent into dionysian madness, with an awesome destructive power. Courtly love was a system of guidelines--manners if you will--to hold that force in check.”

Harry gives her a small, reassuring smile--like he knows how off-base the topic must seem to her: “The story of Lancelot and Guinevere was told as an example of that destructive power.”

“Lancelot fell in love with Arthur’s Queen, Guinevere, from the moment he laid eyes on her,” Harry continues. “Their love tore through the court of King Arthur from the foundations up. Razed that powerful thing to the ground. Arthur was forced to sentence his Queen to be burned at the stake for adultery.”

Whatever Roxy had expected, it certainly hadn’t been a lesson in the Arthurian mythos. The stories had never really interested her as a girl and seem like a pointless conversation to have now. 

But Harry looks dead serious. 

“I still don’t understand,” Roxy frowns at him, trying to remember her Britannic mythology. “Guinevere died?”

“Guinevere wasn’t burned, Roxy. Because Lancelot, loyal to a fault, would do anything to protect his beloved,” Harry explains. “He saved her, at great cost to himself and the society in which he lived.”

“So?” Roxy scowls, in no mood for this cryptic history lesson.

“We didn’t choose you by default,” Harry patiently explains. “You aren’t Lancelot by mere process of elimination.”

“We chose you because of your uncompromising loyalty. Demonstrated time and time again during recruitment-- your willingness to die rather than give up the Kingsmen during the train test, your absolute and reckless refusal to let Eggsy fall to what you thought was certain death during the parachute test.”

"Granted Eggsy proved himself equally capable during these tests, but failed the final test--the willingness to sacrifice."

“You are a remarkable young woman, Roxy,” Harry says. “And I trust you--if you will excuse the terrible pun--whole-heartedly to do what needs to be done to take care of Roman. Regardless of the implications for our relations with MI-6 and our erstwhile Arthur.”

Roxy nods, and takes her leave of Harry, walking toward the open door, where the Kingsmen jet waits, idling in the hanger. 

“And Lancelot,” Harry tosses a small envelope to her, which she fumbles before catching.

Befuddled, Roxy glances down to see something scribbled in Merlin’s chicken scratch. A set of GPS coordinates, she realizes.

“Your Guinevere,” Harry explains. “The world can be a cold and dangerous for a spy who’s been burned. Let her know that there’s a place for her here, if she wants it.”

\--------

“What are you going to do to me?” Roman directs his question at Percival, ignoring Roxy entirely. 

“Actually,” Roxy smiles, showing all her teeth. “It’s lady’s choice.”

They dump what’s left of Roman at MI-6’s doorstep.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Roxy tells the pilot as she digs Merlin’s envelope out of her pocket. “There’s one more stop I’d like to make.”

\------

This time, when Roxy jumps from the belly of the plane, thousands of feet up in the silky darkness, it’s as easy as breathing.


	13. Wouldn't it be Loverly

“You know,” Amelia says conversationally as Roxy half-carries her to the room’s bed, “when Eggsy rescued his damsel in distress, he got anal.”

They’re in a tiny, seaside village on the southeast coast of Spain, both exhausted. 

Roxy doesn’t speak Spanish, besides knowing how to ask where the restroom is, and all Amelia apparently knows how to say is a few swear words and what she insists are very detailed and specific instructions for the bedroom.

Worryingly, neither this nor the state of the two women had caused the innkeeper to bat an eye when he’d handed them the key to the room.

“How do you even know that--about Eggsy?” Roxy asks after they’ve dimmed the lights and curled around each other in the bed.

“You’d be surprised how often the Kingsmen forget to take off their glasses when they’re fucking on the job,” Amelia murmurs. “I think some do it on purpose.”

“Poor Merlin” Roxy says, flopping to the mattress beside her with a sigh. “And I hate to disappoint you Amelia, but I don’t think I’m up to the task tonight.”

“It’s alright if you can’t get your dick up,” Amelia says seriously, reaching over to pat Roxy’s stomach. “Happens to everyone.”

“It’s not a matter of getting it up,” Roxy points to her crotch, feeling tired and goofy with the relief that Amelia is alright. “Just that I left the bloody thing at home.”

Amelia laughs, and it is a wonderful sound. 

\-----------

They elect for a brief recovery in Spain before returning to England. After touching base with Merlin, Roxy tucks her Kingsmen glasses well out of sight.

As Amelia’s injuries heal, they explore the town and the surrounding countryside on increasingly lengthy and meandering walks. 

Roxy’s favorite place is a small secluded beach about a mile from their hotel and one afternoon, they raid the nearby bodega, find an old blanket and camp out in the sun for hours. 

As the sun sinks to the horizon at their backs, the huddle together against the chill of the encroaching evening, watching the ocean. They should head back, Roxy knows, but she doesn’t want to. It’s been such a nice day and she doesn’t want it to end.   
“Thank you,” Amelia says. “For saving me.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” Roxy says, tucking her head into Amelia’s shoulder. “Not after all you’d done for the Kingsmen.”

Amelia draws back a bit, the hand running through Roxy’s hair pauses.

“Oh, so it was purely repayment?” She asks, too casual.

Shit, Roxy thinks, because she’s bullocks at this. 

“Before Harry told me where you were,” Roxy says slowly, “before that, I had this thought.”

“Oh?”

She pauses, choosing her words with care. She needs Amelia to understand.

“I knew, in the same way that I knew I was going to take my next breath or that my heart would keep beating, that I was going to find you. Bring you home,” Roxy says. “I realized that there wasn’t a place I wouldn’t go. No dark ally I wouldn’t walk down if there was a chance of finding you at the end.”

The realization had honestly been a little terrifying to Roxy. But if Amelia hasn’t already read that in Roxy’s face, Roxy certainly isn’t going to say it out loud.

Amelia threads her hand back through Roxy’s hair, just behind her ear to tilt up Roxy’s face for study. Roxy lets her, looking from Amelia’s dark eyes to her lips--slightly parted, smiling.

“That,” Amelia kisses Roxy’s jaw, trailing warm and gentle up to the corner of her mouth. “Is the cheesiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Roxy opens her mouth to protest, but Amelia cuts her off by pressing their lips together, twisting them both so that she can push Roxy on to her back on the sand.

“It’s also the sweetest,” Amelia admits as she moves to kiss the column of Roxy’s neck--along her collarbones, her hands at the buttons of Roxy’s shirt. Roxy scrambles to help.

Besides a few drunken adventures during school that never got much further than sloppy kisses, Roxy’s partners have been mostly men. 

She doesn’t really know what she’s doing, just that she needs to touch. That, though Amelia is kneeling over her, the distance feels like a continent between them-- far too far.

She reaches up to run her hands along Amelia’s back, her waist, her breasts. Amelia audibly gasps as Roxy’s fingers brush over her nipples through the thin fabric of the dress, already hard little points.

As Amelia fumbles behind Roxy’s back for the clasp of her bra--Roxy arches up so she has space-- Roxy grasps the hem of Amelia’s dress and tugs it upward.

Amelia helps pull the dress up over her head and tosses it aside like it has personally wronged her. 

Her breasts are round with pert, dark nipples.They press softly against Roxy’s stomach as Amelia leans to press her body down over Roxy, her breath warm against Roxy’s chest. 

Frustrated by Roxy’s bra, Amelia simply tugs it down, freeing Roxy to Amelia’s curious fingers. 

“Hang on,” Roxy says, hooking a hand behind her to discard the bra, tossing it over to lie next to Amelia’s dress. 

Amelia kisses down from Roxy’s neck, pinching one of Roxy’s nipples between two fingers before taking the other into her mouth. She sucks before taking the bud gently between her teeth and applying just the smallest pressure. 

Roxy moans, arching her back and pushing into it. 

Amelia’s hands ghost down her sides, down her ribs to settle over her hip bones. 

The touch is so light it sends her skin shivering, a jolt of warmth pooling between her legs. Amelia tugs down her shorts and her pants, which tangle briefly on Roxy’s ankles before she kicks them away.

Roxy’s more turned on than since she can remember. Can feel it dripping out of her to slick her thighs. 

“God,” Amelia says, looking down at her. “You’re so wet for me.”

But though Amelia looks, she doesn’t touch yet. She elects instead to drive Roxy insane, taking her time and stroking her hands up Roxy’s legs from the ankle as she kisses down her stomach. 

“Fuck, Amelia!” Roxy hisses as Amelia, instead of reaching between Roxy’s legs, takes a detour, kissing down Roxy’s right leg to the knee, her tongue leaving a trail in her wake that chills in the ocean breeze.

“Yes,” Amelia nips at the soft skin of Roxy’s inner thigh, sending a surprising jolt of pleasure up Roxy’s spine. “That’s the idea.”

Amelia--the massive tease--kisses the reddened skin before moving at a maddeningly leisurely pace upward, before she finally brings one of her hands down to lift apart the folds of Roxy’s labia. 

Roxy shudders.

Experimentally, she applies gentle pressure just above Roxy’s clit.

“Fuck,” Roxy groans before breaking off in truncated little gasps. 

She’s so close to coming. She flexes her hands into the worn fabric of the blanket. Feels the sand grit on her palm as her entire world shrinks down to the points where she is in contact with Amelia. 

It’s almost embarrassing how quickly Roxy comes once Amelia brings her lips to Roxy’s clit. 

She can feel the pulsing pleasure of her orgasm barrel toward her as Amelia takes Roxy into the warmth wet of her mouth.

She arches her back until only the back of her head and her hips press into the sand--the tension it pulls across her stomach and the sweet pressure it puts along the buttons of her spine is nothing short of divine.

“Fuck, Amelia,” She says, clawing out to clasp one of Amelia’s hands in her own. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Then Amelia presses her tongue right above Roxy’s clit and it’s perfect. 

Roxy comes and comes and comes. 

\---------

Later, after they’re both spent and exhausted, they gather their clothes and lay together under the stars. 

Amelia falls asleep first. Roxy lies awake a little longer, listening to the crash of the waves on the beach and feeling right with the world.

Roxy knows It won’t last forever, this happiness.

Eventually they’ll have to go back to England. They’ll have to navigate a rocky relationship with MI-6. Sooner or later, the Kingsmen will find themselves up against another Valentine, hellbent on mayhem. 

But for now, she is lying on a beach under the stars in Spain. She has Amelia. She has Eggsy and Michelle; Harry, Merlin and Percival.

For now, she can be happy. 

\-------

THE END


End file.
